Puck's Story
by ShadeMP
Summary: After he is abandoned by his friends, Puck strikes out on his own. While wandering the Wyldwood, he meets a girl who may change his life. Will he win her over?
1. Boredom

Puck POV~

I pulled an apple out of my pocket and eyed it before taking a bite out of it. Lounging up in a tree I looked at my surroundings before I swallowed. This was getting boring, just being here, nothing to do, no one to annoy the crap out of… I swung my leg idly through the air, counting off in my head who I'd already graced with my wonderful presence.

Let's see… Oberon wants my head because of what I did to Titania… Mab has orders out currently that state that if I am even found, anywhere, in her territory that I am to be killed… The bone witch wants to cook me…

I came to one dull conclusion. Without Meghan, Ash, and that annoying little furball, Grimalkin around… Things were boring… to the profound extent.

I swung down from the tree cradle that I'd woven from Summer glamour and landed on the ground with a quiet thump. I looked around as the ever present fog writhed and danced around my feet. The Wyldwood was dark, gloomy, ominous, and dangerous. I loved it here.

I started walking through the washed out landscape. Compared to the Summer court- my home- this place was all gloom and darkness, but you have to see the shadows in order to appreciate the light.

I crossed my arms and continued on my way through the woods. It may be hard to believe it: But living in the extremely dangerous and usually life-threatening Nevernever actually wasn't all that great. I had nothing to do, no one to see, and not a single thing to antagonize. I let out a sigh. I wish Meghan were here. Iceboy even makes better company than this.

But they were gone. Off in the Iron kingdom where they were happy... but I still didn't have to like it.

My miserable thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of something crashing through the undergrowth. Something big. I spun around just in time to see her burst through the bushes full speed. The girl was obviously fey like me. The pointed ears said it all.

She halted in front of me as if wondering why I was here. Then she darted around me and disappeared into the gloom without a word. I watched the spot that she ran off towards- until a rather large and very angry Basilisk came ripping out of the forest and towards me from behind. One glance over my shoulder was all I needed.

I jumped out of the way and pulled my daggers from my boots. The Basilisk rounded on me and I adverted my eyes. If I caught it's evil gaze, I would be dead on the spot.

It hissed and lunged at me. Shoving off the ground, I jumped in the air at the last second- and landed square on it's head. There. Now it can't look at me.

The beast shrieked and tried to shake me off, but I held tight. No way in hell was I going to be thrown off a Basilisks back! It whipped it's tail about in anger and I laughed. This was more like it! Nothing like a good fight to the death with a very large animal to get the blood pumping! I let go with one hand, and plunged my blade between it's ribs. It shrieked in pain and I jumped off it. As I hit the ground, I tucked into a roll and was now under it. I made the vital blow and dove away as it collapsed in a heap of ugly.

I stuck my tongue out at it. "You just got schooled by Robin Goodfellow!"

I laughed and turned away. It would have to try much harder than that if it wanted to actually eat me. I looked up and then stopped. The girl from earlier was standing at the edge of the clearing. She was just barely visible among the shadows and mist, and she was staring right at me.

.


	2. Why are you here

Ani POV~

I stared at the faery boy who was across the clearing from me. He just massacred that Basilisk, without breaking a sweat. I thought back to about two days ago when I'd first stumbled upon the vicious creature. I had been hunting for food, and thinking that it's nest was a normal bird nest, I started collecting the eggs. The bird demon then came out of nowhere and I've been running since.

I blinked and looked at the boy again. He had blazing red hair and emerald green eyes. A name came to mind, but it drifted out of reach before I could remember. The boy stepped towards me.

"Hey," He seemed to be at a loss for words. "I think I've seen you before." A grin spread across his face and he sauntered over to me. He reached out a hand. "I have no clue who you are, but you can call me Puck."

I regarded his hand suspiciously. His name did not spring up good memories. Glancing at him, I cleared my throat. "I think I've heard of you... are you from the court of Summer?"

His grin widened. "The jester of king Oberon himself." He continued to hold his hand out until I glared at it. His grin faltered momentarily and he dropped it nonchalantly. "So..." He started, obviously picking up on my distrust. "Why was that Basilisk chasing you?"

"What's it to you?" I didn't know why I was being so rude, I just had a feeling that I needed to drive this boy off.

"Oh nothing, I just wanted to know how you managed to tick her off so badly... if I hadn't known better I'd might have guessed that it had to do with the eggs in your bag there." He narrowed his eyes at my bag as if daring me to argue.

I stared at him. "How do you know about the eggs?"

"I guessed." He gave me an unnerving grin and looked at the bag. "Were you starving?"

"Yes..."

He smirked. "Nailed it!" He paused as if in thought, then looked me in the eyes. "What's your name anyways?"

"What's it to you!?" I honestly didn't know why I was being such a pain so I bit my tongue then looked down. "Call me Ani and drop it."

"Sure thing," He dropped the topic, then made a great show of looking around. "So what are you doing out here in the middle of the Wyldwood all by your lonesome?"

I stayed silent. Unsure if I should tell him my reason for being in this rotten place, I went on the defensive. I crossed my arms. "Why are _you_ here?"

"Brrr." He pretended to shiver. "Are you a Winter fey? You sure are icy enough to pull it off."

I waited.

"O-kay..." He shrugged as if his reason didn't matter. "I pretty much signed my own death warrant by helping my arch rival get back to the girl he loved- who happened to be _my _princess." He scowled, though he didn't pull it off very well. He seemed like too much of a carefree faery. "That's why I'm here. No one wants me around unless they're trying to kill me." He stated resentfully.

I blinked at him. Wow. I wasn't expecting _that._

He shrugged. "It's not important right now." There was still a touch of bitterness in his voice, but he was obviously trying to hide it. I suppressed a smirk. _Typical Summer. Thinks he can actually hide his volatile emotions. Ha. Good luck with that._

I blinked as he snapped in my face. "Hey- anyone home? Earth to Ani."

I veered back away from his outstretched hand and snarled at him. He pulled back and raised an eyebrow at me. "I'm going to assume that you _are_ a Winter."

Suddenly annoyed, I turned away. "It's been fun, but I have to go. Don't look for me."

I started walking and about fifteen paces later I heard his annoying voice again.

"Where are you going anyways?"

I spun around and found myself face to face with him. I stepped back quickly as it occurred to me how close we were- close enough to kiss. He was now eating a shiny red apple and was watching me in a bothersome manner. I sighed. I didn't need Puck following me around like some sort of lost puppy all day, so I opted for a less subtle approach in case he just didn't get my last excuse.

Baring my teeth at him, I snarled. "I'm a Winter. You're a Summer. Buzz off."

He simply laughed at me. "Nah, I think I'll stay awhile."

What was wrong with this guy? He didn't even care that there was an obviously angry Winter fey standing within throttling distance of him! I scowled and turned around. Maybe if I ignored him he would go away.

"Ignoring me won't make me leave." I heard him smirk. "Iceboy never managed it anyways."

I stiffened. _Iceboy… that's familiar… Crud._ I spun on my heels. "Who's Iceboy?" I demanded. If he was talking about who I thought he was talking about- I stopped that train of thought. Dang I hated my temper.

"Ash."

I stared at him. Ash. My brother. "You mean the knight of the Iron court?"

"Yeah, you know him?"

I swallowed. He was striking far too close to my secret for my taste. "No, I don't know him. Not in person anyways."

"Oh, well he's a friend of mine…" He muttered something cross about Ash under his breath and went silent after that.

As I walked, my thoughts wandered. The reason I was in these woods was because of my relation to the queen. If Mab found out that I was her daughter… I clenched my fists. I didn't run away all those years ago to just get found and dragged back to her again!

I glanced back at Puck. He was staring at the ground in a dragging silence that annoyed me far more than it should. I sighed. "Your unnaturally quiet. What's wrong?"

He jumped and glanced at me. "Don't worry about it. Just something that has been bothering me lately."

I lifted my head and faced away from him again. "If it's not something to worry about, why are you sulking?" I said, my tone icy and every bit like the Winter court.

I felt his eyes on the back of my head. He stated quietly. "It may be out of my control, but that doesn't mean I have to like it."

"Is it about what you said earlier?"

"Yeah."

I put the pieces together and came to this conclusion:

Puck loved Meghan Chase, queen of the Iron realm, wife of Ash.

I glanced back at him, he was brooding at the ground again. I wanted him to cheer up, I had no idea why… but I did. Dropping back a pace, I waited for him. "Hey, cheer up Redhead, I'm sure you'll find someone else."

He glanced at me. "This is the second one… I thought I killed the first…" He looked up at me, emerald eyes bright with unshed tears. "Now I get to lose the second love of my life to my best friend who's been trying to kill me since Ariella's death…"

"Who's Ariella?"

"Ash's last girlfriend, I inadvertently got her killed by a Wyvern… stabbed her right through the heart… but the Nevernever sent her back as a seer… only for me and Ash to watch her die again."

He finished the last word even more bitterly than when he started. _Jeez. I need to learn what to, and not to ask him about._

He grinned, but it seemed strained. "I really shouldn't be complaining this much." He laughed and scratched the back of his head. "It's not my style."

I blinked at him. This guy was absolutely torn apart inside, and he still tried to cover it up. He was tougher than I'd expected from a Summer fey. I continued walking side by side with him until he broke the silence.

"You remind me of him, you know?"

I stiffened and kept watching the ground in front of me. "I do?"

I felt him gazing at me. "Yeah, you seem sort of like him… except you're blonde… and a girl." He laughed. "But I guess all Winters are like that. Nevermind." Much to my relief, he waved it off and didn't bring it up again.


	3. You can trust me

Puck POV

I glanced at Ani. She really did remind me of Ash… just the way she carried herself. As if she was used to fey fearing her… but she _was _running for her life when I found her… so she really couldn't be very strong. I looked out ahead of me. I'll find out at some point, I guess. I had to keep talking unless I wanted her to think something was wrong- that happens to me alot. When I quiet or thinking, other fey think I'm plotting something, or something really, _really_ bad is about to happen. I never did figure out why.

"You're being quiet again."

I started. Dang she notices these things quickly. I laughed. "Can't I think? I'm not a complete moron, I just usually ignore it when something's telling me not to do something."

"So what you're saying is that you seldom use your brain?"

I snorted. "Yeah, sure. _That's_ what I meant."

She laughed. "You didn't elaborate."

"I didn't think I had to." I shot back with a smirk. "Would you like me to talk more? I can if you want."

"Oh no, not at all. I rather enjoy the silence." Her voice held laughter beneath the surface and I could tell she was joking.

I grinned and turned to her. "I think I'll talk more," I paused. "Uhh… Have you ever been in the Wyldwood before?"

"Yes, I hunted here rather often… awhile ago." She looked at me and I noticed for the first time that she had green eyes. Not like my emerald green, but more of a evergreen. "What about you? Have you ever been here before?"

I threw my arms out dramatically. "I live here, court life isn't my preference at the moment."

"Why?"

I thought about it. "Oberon isn't very happy with me at the moment… and I don't feel like being turned into an animal and shoved in a cage for a decade… I just barely got out of that situation awhile back."

She blinked at me. "Oberon turns people into animals when they don't abide by the rules?"

"No," I corrected her with a laugh. "He turns _me _into an animal whenever I anger him."

"Why does he do that?"

"The worlds will never know."

She looked at me. "Well I'm happy you didn't go back then." She looked away and for a second it looked like she was blushing. _Why's she blushing? _I stared at her. She sure was easy to read for a Winter fey, almost like she is more of a Wyldfey. She glanced back at me and smiled.

"I like you more like this, Oberon shouldn't turn you into anything…" Her voice trailed off and we continued walking in an awkward silence until I spoke up again- I pretended that all the hints flew right over my head.

"Yeah, so lord pointy ears isn't very happy with me, maybe I should wait a few centuries before going back to Arcadia." I felt kind of downtrodden at the thought of not going home for that long- but it was better than being caged for all the court to see. I sighed. Things just weren't working out for me lately. I glanced at her. Or most things.

She spoke up, obviously glad for the topic change. "What did you do to earn his wrath anyways?"

I shrugged and smirked my devilish smirk. "Oh nothing, one thing led to another and Titania became infatuated with everything she laid eyes on- Oberon has a slight jealous streak and didn't appreciate the joke nearly as much as I did." I chuckled at the memories of my king trying to get her away from a coatrack. "Not the best prank, but I'm working on the plots for future jokes." I glanced at her and she was laughing. It made me happy to see that.

I continued. "I was thinking of trying to catch and shave that furball Grimalken, that could be amusing. Just the look on his face!" I imitated an angry felines expression and Ani giggled.

"I don't think the Cait Sith would appreciate that."

"He would probably claw my face off." I said with a grin. "If he could catch me."

"Are you hard to catch?" She was watching me attentively and I had the urge to keep talking- I wanted her to smile and laugh.

I nodded. "I've been around long enough to know _all_ the tricks."

"Which are?"

I started listing off some of the things- like making duplicates of myself out of leaves or turning into a raven. She listened and occasionally commented, her evergreen eyes never leaving mine.

I finally ended with, "And that's how I avoided the Bone Witch! She was _mad_ since I ended up just leaving the broom at the edge of her swamp!" and she laughed, a wonderful chiming sound… I could listen to that all day and never get tired of it.

I looked around, "Where are we going anyways? Or do you wander like me?"

She blinked, and unlike earlier today, she didn't throw the question back in my face.

"I wander… I can never stay in one spot too long because I attract unwanted attention." She looked at me. "Puck… I have to tell you something." She took a breath and stared at the ground to gather her thoughts. She glanced up at me. "I can trust you right..? I've never told anyone this before."

I nodded quickly. "Yeah, you can trust me."

"Umm… well… you know how I'm a Winter fey… right?"

I nodded.

"Well… I'm also a princess…" She glanced up at me. "I'm Mab's daughter."

I blinked at her as I let that set in. She was the ice princess. I've been away from court for so long that I didn't even know about her until just now. Then it hit me. "That's why you remind me of Iceboy! You two are related."

She looked away and nodded. "Promise you won't tell anyone?" She mumbled and I nodded vigorously. "I promise I won't tell anyone… but why don't you want anyone to know?"

She clenched her fists and snarled. "I ran away from that icy hell the first time, there's no way I'm ever going back!"

I held up my hands. "O-kay, I don't blame you there. I really don't." I laughed. "Mab isn't exactly the definition of 'cuddly' now is she?"

"No."

"Yeah, so I won't turn you in, I'd rather you stay around here anyways."

We stared at each other as it occurred to me what I'd just said. _I'd rather you stay around here anyways. _And it was true, I didn't want her to leave. I blinked. "Uhh… I mean…"

She smiled at me faintly. "I don't want to leave either."


	4. Training

**Hi there everyone, I'm just letting you know that you can feel free to comment. Haha I'm not going to bite your heads off if you say something, besides, I like to talk.**

Ani POV

I smiled at Puck. He was actually really nice, I couldn't figure out why I was trying to drive him off earlier. He smiled back and I looked around. "Usually all I ever do is, hunt, avoid other fey, run away from monsters, and hope that Mab won't find me… so I guess we could keep walking if you want to."

He nodded and grinned. "Sure thing, Ice Princess." He paused and smirked as he said 'princess'.

I scowled at the faery boy. "You don't have to call me that, I don't use the title."

He laughed. "Aww, but I like the sound of it. Has a good ring to it."

I laughed and looked at him. I liked having his company much more than I liked going solo. Less stressful too. I had the feeling that I would be doing alot less running now… maybe even fight once in a while! "Okay, just don't let anyone hear you call me that."

He looked at me. "I won't-" He grinned. "Unless you prefer Icegirl, after all, you are Iceboy's sister."

I laughed. "Okay, you can call me that, that's rather safe."

"Okay Frosty."

I turned away from him, a smile creeping over my lips. This boy was impossible, I liked that. "Come on, when I stay still for too long monsters begin to notice."

"Don't you ever fight them?"

I paused and thought about the daggers in the bottom of my bag. "I _used_ to fight them… until I realized that I was just getting myself hurt a redundant amount of times so I stopped… I'm not used to using daggers."

His grin widened and within a second he was balancing a dagger on two fingers. "I can teach you."

My eyes widened. "You can? That's great! That way I can actually defend myself without getting hurt as badly."

He cocked his head to the side. "You can use glamour right? I won't be able to help you much there…" His voice trailed off and I'm sure we both had the same thought. Which was: _Screw the courts! I don't care about them! _

I smiled at him. "Yeah, I can use my glamour."

He brightened as if knowing what I'd just thought. "Good."

And that was almost a silent agreement saying that neither of us cared about the rules of the courts- which clearly state that members of different courts couldn't do anything other than try to kill the other- anyways. I smiled, I couldn't help it. He was willing to break the rules to stay with me. "Okay, so how do I use these?"

After he showed me how to hold the daggers, we sparred. He won every round, and by the time we were done, I was on the ground, beat up, sore, and covered in leaves, grass, and dirt. I looked up at him as he offered his hand, I took it and he gently pulled me to my feet. "You aren't as bad as you think, I've been using these since as long as I can remember so that's why you couldn't hit me."

I looked at him. His jacket barely had a dirt smudge on it, and I'm pretty sure that the one that _was_ there, was from when I got aggravated and tackled him to the ground. At the time we both stared at each other awkwardly because we were so thoroughly tangled that neither of us could move. I blushed at the thought. I enjoyed that a bit too much.

He laughed and scratched the back of his head. "You managed to get me to the ground at least!"

I laughed and felt my face heat some more. I liked that _way_ too much.


	5. End of the day

**Hey everyone! Sorry about the length of the last chapter, I just felt that we needed to get inside Puck's head for awhile. And thanks for all the reviews! I like reading through them. Enjoy! ;)**

Puck POV

I smiled at her, she was blushing again. I liked it when she blushed, she was even prettier when she did. At the time that she tackled me, I really didn't mind- I actually rather liked it- and it was even better that we got stuck for a second! I don't think I should tell her that… I wasn't positive that she was really going to risk banishment for me, but I knew I would for her.

I looked at her and she smiled at me. Definately.

"Yeah. I did, didn't I?"

I laughed. "I honestly didn't expect that, you usually tried to swing at me."

She looked down. "I got annoyed and wanted to actually land a hit rather than be dodged."

I grinned cheekily and pulled an apple from his pocket. Looking at it, I took a bite. Then I answered between chews. "Would you have liked to hit me?" I gave Ani a doe-eyed look of innocence. "Why would you ever want to do that?" I swallowed and took another chomp from the red delicious. "I only insist on calling you Frosty, and have been following you since this morning."

She rolled her evergreen eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. I looked at her- really looked at her- and noticed for the first time that she was wearing black jeans with a dark blue button up shirt. She also had pale blonde hair of a Winter sidhe and had pale skin.

"Oh, you know that I'm fine with you stalking me, you lurker." Her eyes glittered mischieviously and she grinned at me in a very me-like manner. "Besides, it's obvious that you have nothing better to do, but to stalk poor damsels that are in distress through the dark, _scary_, woods." She gestured around to our surroundings. "Am I right _Prince Charming_?"

I laughed at her tone. "I don't lurk. You knew I was here the whole time, and if I remember right, you nearly ran into _me. _It's only natural that I'd follow you after that."

She nodded with a smirk. "Yeah, I see your point… but I'm still going to tease you."

I threw my hands up in mock surrender. "Okay, I can't stop that." Grinning I looked around. "Hey, if you don't go anywhere in particular, why don't you follow me? I tend to set up camp around now."

She started and looked up, then frowned. "I always forget that the sun and moon are temperamental here. How long have we been talking?" She yawned and I laughed.

"Long enough for you to get tired." I teased. "So what do you say?" I gestured around us. "You can come with me."

She looked indecisive and I offered my hand to her. "Chill out Frosty." I said with a grin. "I promise I'll be a perfect gentleman as long as you want me to be."

She giggled and took my hand. "Well isn't that reassuring."

And with that, I led her to my usual camp.

I stopped once we arrived at my glade and looked around. Fog blotted out most of the landscape, and there was a pond towards the edge of the clearing. I glanced at her. "Just stay clear of the water and you should be fine." I paused and looked at her. "You can climb, right?"

She looked at me as if wondering if I were stupid or not. "Of course I can climb. I haven't survived this long by being completely ground ridden." She laughed and looked around. "Do you sleep in trees?"

I pointed at a tall Fogpod tree in the middle two other shorter trees at the edge of the space. The branches were widespread and there were plenty of ways to climb up it. "I usually sleep up there. Follow me."

I started towards the tree and she followed me. Once we got there I jumped up onto the lowest limb and offered her my hand. She took it eagerly and let me pull her up onto the branch. It easily supported both our weights and I looked up. There was another branch directly above my head, I reached for it and swung myself up and over it.

After we got to a reasonable height, I wrapped the branches over each other using my Summer glamour and made a hammock. I flopped down in it. "You want me to make another nest-"

She was already curled up next to me. I looked at her as she drifted off to sleep. _When's the last time she actually got to sleep? _I put my arms around her, her skin was cool like her heritage would imply and she relaxed into me. She mumbled something and went silent after that.

I glanced around and saw that nothing was lurking in the shadows of the clearing, so I closed my eyes and drifted off.

I woke up the next morning to find that Ani wasn't in my arms anymore. I sat up and looked around to find that she had climbed up further into the tree and was perching on a branch near to top. She was looking at a fogpod fruit as if debating whether or not it was edible. "It's not edible, so don't eat it." I called up to her as I stood.

She jumped and glanced at me. A smile quirked her lips. "I know, I just like to look at all the fruit I find. That way, I can identify it later."

I started up the tangle of branches that were between us and laughed. "Fogpod isn't much to look at. It's ugly, grey, and full of murky liquid."

She picked one and broke it open on a branch. The nasty fluid spilled out from it and she wrinkled her nose. "And it smells rank."

Now next to her, I gently took it from her hands and dropped it to the ground. I turned back to her and looked into her eyes. "That usually tips off others to the fact that they shouldn't eat it." I smiled a bit and looked at another pod that was hanging over my head. I snatched it away from it's branch and pocketed it. "These make great resources for pranks. Not to mention they distract monsters when you throw it at them." I grinned and looked around. "If you stay with me much longer, you're sure to find that out."

She rolled her eyes. "I guess there's no way around that then." She smiled at me, and a wave of warmth went through me. She was going to stay.

"Good." I grinned- not a worrisome grin, but a genuine one. "Now I'm going to assume that you're as hungry as I am- if not, more- and I'll bring you hunting."

She brightened. and as if in response, her stomach growled.

I laughed. "Okay, it's decided then."


	6. Visitors

**Hey everyone! Just wanted to let you know that my posts will probably slow down soon, schools a pain -_- but I will try to keep up with this so just be a little patient with me.**

Ani POV

Puck and I climbed down from the tree and I looked around. "Where will we be hunting?"

He was staring out into the woods and he was tense. I tapped him on the shoulder. "Hey, Redhead. Where are we hunting?"

He jumped and looked at me. Grinning he through out his arms and declared. "The world is our apple!"

"Is that a real saying?"

"I honestly don't know." He laughed. "And I don't care either."

We started walking, except he kept glancing around us as if he felt like he was being watched. I stopped. "What's wrong?"

He turned and looked at me. "I think we're being followed."

I stiffened in fear. What if our stalker recognizes me? I exhaled. "Person or animal?"

He looked down in thought. "It feels intelligent… we're being stalked."

I glanced around scanning our surroundings. I didn't feel anything strange… but he was far older than me… and I did get the impression that he wasn't new to this.

"Whoever it is… their close." He clamped his eyes shut as another voice came from behind us.

"Puck! There you are, Ash and I finally got a vacation so we went looking for you." A girl ran up behind us and grabbed Puck in a hug. He glanced at me awkwardly and spun to hug her back.

"Hey Princess. It's been a long time."

_Is that Meghan Chase? The Iron queen?_

My thought were interrupted by someone else melting out of the shadows. He had an icy sword attached to his hip, and he radiated Winter glamour… kind of… he seemed strange, somewhat mortal but not quite a halfbreed. Ash. My older brother who by the looks of it, definitely recognized me.

I backed away and stepped behind Puck nonchalantly. I didn't need my _brother _dragging me back to Mab. That would really suck.

"Anita? What are you doing away from court?" He stepped around Puck and looked at me. "I heard that you ran away, but I didn't think that you would be with Goodfellow this whole time."

I blinked. "I met Puck yesterday. I haven't been with him this whole time."

Puck was now standing beside me protectively. He stared Ash down. "Iceboy… leave her alone. She's not going back."

Ash shrugged. "I don't blame her." He smirked. "I'm not going back either."

Meghan came up behind him and hugged him. She watched me from over his shoulder and I shifted my footing uncomfortably. I didn't like all this attention. She looked from me to Puck then finally asked. "Who's this?" She smiled at Puck as if really asking. "Do you like her?" and he glanced at me. "This is Ani. We ran into each other yesterday."

I laughed slightly. I did practically run into him. I nearly slammed right into him.

Meghan came around from Ash's back and looked at me. "I'm Meghan by the way. Pleased to meet you."

I nodded and forced a smile. This was the girl that Puck mentioned earlier… "Pleased to meet you too."

She beamed at me and turned back to Puck. I could see that she obviously had feeling other than friendship for him, but I also saw the way she kept looking back at my brother lovingly. She's already made up her mind. _Good. _I thought. _I'll take Puck off your hands for you. _She lowered her voice to the point where I couldn't hear. Then after she said something, Puck glanced at me, smiled and said something back.

I was immediately annoyed that they were talking about me, so I crossed my arms and turned around. Coming face to face with Ash. I jumped and raised my fists. He regarded them in amusement. "You still act like an Unseelie at least."

I glowered at him. He was still quiet and stealthy, like a prince of Winter should be. That annoyed me even more than I already was. "What's it to _you? _Brother."

He shrugged. "I was just curious." He glanced up and I followed his gaze. Puck and Meghan were watching us, the two ex children of Winter. Puck raised an eyebrow at Ash and flashed him an unnerving grin. "Gossiping Iceboy?"

Meghan laughed and looked at us. "Who is she anyways? She seems familiar." She looked between me and Ash and gasped as realization dawned on her. "Princess Anita?" She gaped at me in a very un queen-like manner. "I never got to meet you! You ran away!"

I looked at Puck who was cringing. He looked at me as if saying "Sorry, I was hoping she wouldn't guess."

I laughed weakly. The queen and consort of the Iron realm found me. I watched as Puck turned to look at them. "Don't tell anyone that you know where she is." He turned to look at Meghan pleadingly. "She doesn't want to go back, and if Mab hears about her location, the Wyldwood will be overrun with knights in a matter of days."

Meghan looked at me then at Puck. "Puck… we have to report this… otherwise-"

"No!" Puck shouted while grabbing her shoulders. "Just pretend we don't exist if you have to but…" He glanced at me. "don't report her to Mab."

Meghan looked at him with a sad smile. "It doesn't work that way Puck… and you know that." She sighed and glanced at Ash. They appeared to reach a silent understanding and she looked at me. "We won't report you… that would just be screwed up since your mother it _Mab_… but I suggest that you leave the Wyldwood and find somewhere safer… if you don't… well we might not be the only ones who recognized you."

She glanced around. "Many fey live here. Many fey want to fall back into favor with the courts… what better way is there? Return the missing princess? Any fey with half a brain will take the offer."

I swallowed. She was right, it was just a matter of time before some nosy faery stuck his or her nose where it doesn't belong. I glanced at Puck. "Where else could I go? Iron kills… Winter sucks… Summer wouldn't take me… and the mortal world will either a. drive me insane slowly. b. kill me slowly… or c. both. What other choice is there?"

He ran his hand through his fiery red hair. "There are other places… we could just go find another area I guess." He smirked. "Unless you want to wreak havoc on the monarch's personal lives with me." He glanced at Meghan and smiled innocently. "With the exception of you, of course."

She simply rolled her eyes and smiled.

I thought about it and came to this conclusion: Wherever he went, I would go too. I smiled at him. "What do you want to do? I think I'll hang around a certain redhead some more."

He grinned. I like exploring different places in the mortal world." He glanced at all of us with a joking smile. "What do you think? Does the lost city of Atlantis sound good?"

I looked at him smiling as well. "I think that the mortal world will be fine for awhile, no need to go and find Atlantis. That would just ruin it for the mortals."

He offered his hand and I took it with a smile. "I'm fine with that." He looked at Ash and Meghan. "Sorry." He looked at them reluctantly then continued. "I'm going to be leaving Faery for awhile." He paused and looked at me. "Can they come?"

I nodded and he looked back at them. "You guys want to come with?"

Meghan shook her head while watching me. "No, I think that we can find something else to do." She gave me a knowing smile and glanced pointedly at Puck. "Have fun."

I looked down to hide my blazing cheeks. _Am I that obvious?_ I gripped his hand. _Yep._

**Oh yeah, and thanks for explaining how to respond to reviews. xD I'm new to this!**


	7. Annoying Furball

Puck POV

I knew that it was them. Who else would know where to find me? That's right, only them. I panicked when I heard them coming because I knew that they would recognize her. I may have not been around court for a good few decades, but they certainly were. I looked at Meghan and Ash. Things sure have changed, they appeared to be married now, and Ash definitely acted different now that he had a soul. Less "I'm going to kill you with my Leave-Me-Alone-Or-I'll-Kill-You look." and more "I'm going to look the other way, Goodfellow."

I nodded at my friends. "Well, it was good to see you." I grinned like my usual self. "Maybe I can find a way to drop in and give your kingdom the special Puck touch."

Meghan laughed and Ash looked panicked for a second. "Okay Puck, I'll look forward to that." She said then she took Ash's hand and looked back the way they came. She glanced at Ani then smiled at me. "Good luck." The two started to walk away and I stared after them sadly. I might not see them for another decade.

I turned to Ani and fake grinned. "Well at least they didn't spend the whole encounter sucking face, that would be even worse." I glanced after them. I sure missed them, even when they were making me want to gouge my eyes out with a spork…

She laughed. "Do they usually?"

I shook my head and smirked. "Only sometimes."

She looked in the direction they disappeared in. "Where they the ones that you were talking about earlier?"

"Yeah, that was Meghan and Ash." I laughed. "Were we thinking of the same people?"

"Yes…" She paused. "Meghan seems nice."

I stopped a beat. Crap. "Yeah, she's nice. Why?"

Ani looked down. "Oh, no reason." She laughed slightly. "So she's married to him, right? My brother?"

I nodded quickly. "Yeah, they're married."

She brightened. "Okay." Glancing around, she said. "So, we're going to the Mortal world?" She smiled. "Sounds like fun, when do we go?"

I shrugged. "Anytime I guess. Where do you want to go?"

She looked up at me. "I've never been to the Mortal world before. What sounds good?"

I grinned. "I think I might have something in mind."

She leaned closer to me. "Where?"

I thought about it. "You've never been to central park New York, right?"

Her eyes went wide with fascination. "No, which territory of the Mortal realm is it located in?"

I blinked, then laughed. "Connecticut, and Central Park is the largest park in all of the city!" I threw my arms out and drawled. "We just have to be really careful because I know at least ten faeries that live there who would love to kill me!"

She cocked her head in confusion. "Why do they want to kill you?"

I scratched my neck. "For so many reasons that I can't even keep track anymore." We started walking and I smirked. "Although I _do _know that trolls don't like getting nicknames like _Pushed_-face and _Snaggle_-tooth." I glanced at her to see if she was laughing. She was.

That made me feel good to see. It was almost like she liked faeries like me. The prankster. I felt appreciated for the first time in a long one.

"So if I see any trolls, should I say hello for you?" She giggled as she continued. "Or do you want the honors?"

I stepped over a rock that crawled into my path and laughed. "I think we could drop in and say hello to the gang of uglies… I'm sure they've missed me." I thought about the last time I saw them. I was running like hell whooping and hollering as they were chasing after me like a pack of hungry wolves. I rounded a corner and leapt up into a tree. When they came around, hot on my trail, I dropped a clump of twigs on their heads that changed into a very ticked off rhino.

All trolls from that area hate me to this day. I sighed. Good memories, good memories…

She snapped in my face. "Hey, are you listening? I wanted to know if we could stop and get something more… normal, to wear."

I looked at her questioningly and she plowed on quickly. "Our clothes are shredded, and I'm going to assume that mortals don't walk around like this." She pointed to herself and laughed awkwardly. "I look like I just got jumped by a gang of cats."

I looked at her, she was right. The edges of her shirt were covered in dirt, grime, and what looked like old dried blood. There were also numerous tears along the edges of her sleeves and the knees of her pants were torn brutally. I blinked. How did I not notice that until now? I shook myself then looked at her and smirked. "Icegirl wants to go shopping? Okay, I'll come too."

She laughed and looked at me with an evil little smirk. "You should probably get something too, theres a giant mud stain on your back in case you didn't notice it already."

I blinked. She learned how to be a jerk like me fast, a grin spread itself across my face. That was good, very good.

I snorted. "And how did the said stain get there?"

She continued to smirk. "You know exactly how it got there." She braced herself to jump. "Or should I reenact the incident?"

I put up my hands in mock surrender and grinned at her. "Nah, you don't need to tackle me again… unless you want to."

She stepped close enough towards me to kiss- which was rather tempting too- "I think that we should get going." Then she stepped back and left me slightly disappointed. No kiss… oh well.

"Okay, let's go."

We started walking again, and I looked around to figure out where I was. The ground still writhed with fog, but some of it was rising up into the air now. I looked around the fog blotted landscape. There were a mixture of trees and I saw some more Fogpod fruit scattered around on the ground. I bent and gathered a few. If I was going to be visiting Pushed-face and Snaggle-tooth I would need something extra nasty up my sleeves. _Just for them! _

"Hey, where are we anyways? I've never gone this far in before."

I straightened. "We're near the Fogpod orchards it looks like."

"Orchard?" She kicked a mucky colored fruit with her foot and it rolled away making swishing sounds as it did so. "Why would anyone put _these _in an orchard?"

"Why not?"

"Point taken…" She trailed off and stared at something. I followed her gaze to see a pair of glowing yellow feline eyes looking back at us.

"Grim!" She gasped and grabbed my hand. "What are you doing here?"

The annoying furball rolled his eyes. "Must I answer an obvious question _everytime _I appear to someone?"

He sat down and started grooming his plume of a tail. Between licks, he continued. "I have a favor from you, yes?"

I tensed. Furball screwed Ani over on the wrong side of a bargain, this couldn't be good.

Ani steeled herself then looked at the crafty cat. "Yes, you do. What do you want?"

He lifted a paw and started cleaning it thoroughly. "I want, you to…" He began to chew on his claws as many cats do.

I cleared my throat. "What do you want from her furball, and don't start cleaning your tail again unless you want me to drop kick you so high that you see all corners of the briars." I whistled and pointed upwards to emphasize my words. "That wouldn't be fun for you."

Grim paused and looked at me in boredom and annoyance- if that was possible. "I want the princess to retrieve something of value from the mortal world."

Ani looked at him, worry clear on her face. "What is this 'thing of value', cat?"

"Death's key."

Ani and I exchanged confused looks and I turned back to the furball standing within kicking distance of me. "What the hell is that?"

Grimalken yawned, then looked at me in a bored manner. "It is a key, Goodfellow. That has witnessed many deaths." He looked at Ani. "Need I explain more?"

I kicked him lightly with the side of my foot. "Oi, I'm still talking to you."

He glared at me, then turned back to Ani. "It's located in the city mortals call Boston. The only other thing I know is that it is in a place the mortals tend to dislike going- obviously, since it is a token of death." He looked at us. "Am I right in my assumption that Goodfellow will accompany you on your quest?"

"Of course I'm going with her!"

The cait sith regarded me blandly and turned back to her. "I think that settles things." He turned and started padding away. I started. "Oi! Furball, where are you going!?"

"None of your concern, Goodfellow."

I looked between the retreating cat and Ani. "He's not even going to hang around this time. That's reassuring."


	8. Note

**I just wanted to mention that I don't own the Iron Fey series or any of the characters from it. The only character I will claim at this point is Ani, and the previously mentioned Pushed-face and Snaggle-tooth. They are mine. [even if two of them were only mentioned.] I also wanted to let you know that it may look like I posted three chapters right after each other, but I actually updated them because I had edited them earlier that day. It honestly took me about a day or two in order to write them. Sorry if I didn't elaborate, my fault. lol **


	9. You should thaw

**Hey guys, I'm just letting you know that I've never written a romance or even had a boyfriend, so please just bare with me. Oh yeah, and thanks for all the reviews! I feel bad about not posting yesterday. -_- darn my school. I'll probably post faster on the weekend though.  
**

Ani POV

I stare after the cat as he faded from sight. That was oddly out of character for him, usually Grim came along because I 'amused' him. I turned to Puck, he had practically insisted on coming with me. It made my heart flutter slightly. He _wanted _to be with me. He was going to stay. "Hey." I said softly. "Who cares if Grim comes? I would probably owe him _another_ favor by the end of this if he did."

He nodded, though he still looked faintly annoyed. "I just can never understand that annoying furball." He glanced away for a second and I caught him mutter something about rabbits and ruined moments. I cocked my head to the side, but didn't comment.

He looked at me. "Well," He straightened with a huff. "we'd better get going. Furball has a slight impatient streak." He glanced around. "and I don't want him to come back to 'help' us."

I snickered. "Aww… but Grim only aims to please… people who will be indebted to him."

Puck rolled his eyes and I saw him smile. "Come on, we have to find a trod to Boston apparently." He held out his hand and I took it.

I looked into his deep emerald eyes. "I still want to stop at a shop." I didn't say anything else, because I was sure that he could hear my heart trying it's hardest to crash through my ribs. We were going on a quest… together.

He laughed and started to lead me away. "Sure thing, Frosty. That tops our to-do list."

We both laughed and walked further into the Wyldwood than I'd ever been before. No turning back now… and I didn't want to anyways.

After we passed the Fogpod orchards, and therefore the rank smell of the clearing that reminded me faintly of festering dead ogre, we came to a stop. Puck looked around, then turned to me. "I think it's that way." He pointed in what seemed like a random direction and grinned. "Either that or we'll wind up in Brazil." He glanced on ahead and laughed. "That's not too far off the beaten track though. Figuratively anyways."

I thought about it, trods supposedly could lead anywhere and everywhere… so he was right. No matter where we went, we would be a simple doorway away from our destination.

I nodded. "Sounds good. Lead on!" I stepped forward only to realize that the fog covered ground in front of me wasn't ground at all. I pitched forward towards what seemed to be a cliff with a yelp. I tumbled right off my feet, and clamped my eyes shut hoping that it wouldn't hurt. I opened them after a moment and released a gasp that I didn't know I was holding. I wasn't falling to my death.

A strained voice from above. "Hey princess, I know you like to hang around me but this is just ridiculous."

I looked up to see that Puck was laying on his stomach, holding onto my ankle as if _he _were the one needing a lifeline. I looked down and the fog cleared enough for me to see that there was no bottom. I nearly tripped down a freaking chasm! I swayed as he lost some of his grip on my leg.

"Try to climb back up while I pull."

I nodded and groped around for a ledge that I could grip, once I found one, I started to climb back up the ledge like an upside down squirrel.

He finally gave a final yank and I was suddenly flopped on the ground next to him. I got to my knees and scrambled away from the abyss that had opened up out of nowhere and tried to eat me moments before. I flattened myself to the stable ground and Puck walked over to look at me worriedly.

I held up a hand. "Just… one second. Okay?"

He nodded but he wasn't looking at me anymore. He was staring wide eyed in the direction of the fog filled death trap that had nearly taken my life. I sat up and looked. The mist had cleared so quickly that you'd think that it had never been there in the first place, and we now had a clear view of what I nearly fell into. It went so far out that I couldn't see the other side... and from what I could see, the bottom was no better.

A small choking sound is what finally snapped my attention back to Puck. He slowly staggered away from the edge and sat down next to me with a harsh _wump_ as if he more or less fell.

"That… _that. _You nearly… fell... down it… _that_." He stared out at it. "You nearly died." He turned to look at me, his green eyes bright with sheer terror. "If I hadn't been here…"

"I would have died."

"You wouldn't have taken that route." He stared at me. "That would have been my fault…" He looked down and scowled. "Dammit! I'm such a moron…"

I crawled over to him and put my hand on his shoulder. "Hey… It's not your fault. I'm just clumsy."

He continued to stare at the ground. "Fey aren't clumsy- not that much anyways. I'm just dangerous to be around."

I sighed. "Puck. Fey may not be clumsy, but accidents do happen." I glared at him in hopes that he'd give in. "And you're not dangerous. I like you too much for that crud."

He looked up at me. "You like little old me?" He grinned like his old self. "Who would have guessed, Princess?"

I gave him a look and he threw up his hands. "Hey, I nearly fell down a cliff for you. I'm spoken for."

I smiled. That was the best I would get right now. I stood and helped him to his feet. Once he was standing, I leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you, Robin Goodfellow."

He smiled and raised an eyebrow. "I'm tempted to make you regret that."

"I look forward to it." I smiled at him and he grinned back.

"Now let's go the _other_ way, and try not to take a facer off any more cliffs. Okay, Frosty?"

I slapped his arm lightly and he snickered. "I'm not accident proned. Don't you go getting any ideas about me."

He went wide eyed and pointed to himself not-so-innocently. "Who, me? Why would I ever do that?"

I sighed and rolled my eyes. He was such a pain… and it hurts so good. I turned away from him to hide my smile. "Come on Slowpoke, keep up with me."

I started jogging away and he chased after me. Somehow along the way, our jogging turned into a full blown race back towards the orchards. He manipulated the plants at me feet to trip me, and when I finally went down, I turned his path into an ice slick and he slipped and fell. He tried to get to his feet, but I grabbed him and pulled him down again; by the time we were done, we were both winded, covered in dirt and snow, and I was on top of him.

I smirked at the Summer trickster whom I had pinned under me. "Who's faster now?"

He took a breath. "Certainly not you. Neither of us actually won." He gestured up ahead of us and I looked up. The orchards were a good three yards away. I looked back at him. "Screw the race, I have a better idea.

I leaned in closer and he got what I was saying immediately. A grin spread across his features. "Why Princess. Who knew that you of all people would think things like that?"

I leaned in closer, "You did." and I pressed my lips to his. His breath was hot against mine and tasted faintly of apples. I closed my eyes and leaned into him, he didn't fight it, he just kissed me back eagerly.

By the time we broke off the kiss, we were both covered in leaves and he was now on top of me. I relaxed under his touch. "That was fun, but I'm still faster than you."

He rolled off of me and layed on his back beside me. "Yeah, sure Frosty, I'll believe it once I see it." He didn't sound taunting, just content to be here.

I propped myself up on my elbows. "Should we continue the race then? Or are you afraid to be beaten?"

He sat up with a grin. "You should be afraid Princess, I have more tricks up my sleeve than you can ever dream of."

I grinned back at him. "So do I." I smiled innocently and stood. "You might want to stand up, Redhead."

A perplexed look crossed his face and my evil little smirk widened. He tried to stand, then his eyes went wide as he tried again. I froze his pants to the ground.

He gaped at me. "You are one of the first fey who have actually managed to _freeze_ my butt to the ground."He glared at me, but I could see that it was one of grudging admiration. "I'd pat you on the back, but I'm currently indisposed at the moment."

I laughed. "You should thaw."

I felt the temperature rise slightly and he continued to sit. I cocked my head to the side and looked at him. I wasn't sure if he was free or not. While I was trying to figure it out, he shot off the ground and was now hugging my lightly. He whispered in my ear. "You know… I am much harder to catch than that." His eyes were gleaming and he laughed. "Although, you can try again anytime, Frosty. It's interesting to see what you'll do next."


	10. Dang girl, your ready!

**Okay, in the last chapter, Puck nearly led them off a cliff. xD sorry, I didn't use much detail since I was rushing. Haha, the edge was hidden by the fog and Ani tripped down it. **

**xD Keep commenting, I like the reviews! **

Puck POV

I pulled back slightly to look at her. She was smiling cutely at me and I grinned. She was perfect. Liked trouble, had a good sense of humor, and she was kind.

Her smile twisted into a good natured smirk. "You really shouldn't have said that. I have many more tricks where that came from, and you're easy to distract."

I trailed my hand through her hair absently. "Yeah… you do seem good at distracting me." The sentence came out slightly breathlessly and I blinked. What was I doing? I sounded like a lovesick mortal cooing over their other half. I smirked. "I bet I could distract you if I actually tried." I said this with the faint underlining of a challenge and she laughed.

"I doubt it…" She looked back at the orchards. "Come on, we should get going. We should at least _try_ to find a trod."

I reluctantly released her and followed her gaze. I looked at the orchard, I don't think either of us actually wanted to go back through them, but we had no choice. We would have to find another path to the Mortal world… and one that wasn't unreasonably dangerous. I took point and started to lead her back towards the Fogpod place. If we stumbled across any more cliffs, I would be the one to fall down it, not her. I could at least fly.

We walked for awhile in silence before I pretended to cough. "So… we need to get to Boston." I glanced back at her to make sure that she was still there. She was following a few feet behind me looking around the fog strewn forest. I continued. "To find the Key of Death… well isn't that just a sunshiny sounding name? Maybe the person who named it needed a hug."

I heard her quiet laugh behind me.

"Yeah, that's definitely what they needed."

I shrugged. "Hey, you never know. Maybe they had a bad day at work and-"

"Puck?"

"Yeah?"

"Really?"

I laughed and waved my hand dismissively. "Okay, okay. So we need to get to Boston…" After thinking a second, I cringed slightly. "I know where another trod is."

She sped up to match my pace. "Oh good. Where is it?"

"Dragonden Ally." I stared off in the direction of it and raised my fist to hide what I was thinking. "Let's go slay an ancient and powerful dragon!"

She didn't respond and I glanced back. She was standing with one foot in the air as if she froze mid step. I stopped. "Ani?"

"Let me get this straight…" She looked in the direction of our new destination. "In order to get to Boston, we have to kill a Dragon?"

I nodded and she sighed. "Why can't Grim ever give people simple tasks?"

I laughed. "Furball would most likely say "Because I am a cat." but I'll just say, because he's a pain."

"Good point." She giggled and walked over to me. "I don't think he would like you ripping off his line."

"What will he do about it?"

"Nothing, I guess." She looked around. "So we have to slay a dragon?"

I nodded. "A strong Dragon."

She put her hands on her hips and pouted- she was cute when she pouted- "Okay, well let's go then."

I led her through the woods until a shriek pierced the deafening silence. We both jerked our heads in the direction of the sound.

She gasped. "Was that…?"

I nodded. "A death cry. Come on, let's go see what it came from."

We both jogged towards the direction the we heard the cry come from. I broke through the brambles that tore at my clothes and skidded to a halt. A Dragon lie dead across the clearing. The Dragon. Ani wrenched free of some thorns and spun around. She froze.

"The Dragon."

I nodded. Something had just killed it. Something that was still here.

The figure across the clearing looked up at us. Blood splattered their grey t-shirt and camouflage cargo shorts. I squinted, she was a girl. Who was absolutely armed to the teeth. She regarded us with a look of unsurprised boredom and bent to pick up a knife, it was covered in Dragon ichor and she wiped it off on her pants. Then she jammed it back into her pocket.

Whoever she was- she was capable of killing an ancient monster without help.

I stepped between Ani and the obviously dangerous faery. "Who are you?"

She glanced at me and smirked. "That doesn't matter. All that matters is that we're going in the same direction." He then turned and started walking in the direction of the currently dead Dragon's ally.

I started. "Oi! I'm talking to you! Where are you going?!"

She continued to walk without looking back at us. "Boston, Massachusetts. Same as you, Robin." He gestured for us to follow him. "I killed the pathetic thing, so come on before _another _trod guardian is placed."

Ani and I exchanged glances. She lowered her voice. "Should we trust her?"

I laughed quietly. "Nah, but let's go with her anyways."

As we passed the dragon, I noticed that it was screwed up pretty bad. It looked like a gang of redcaps went after it!

I looked back at the girl that we were following. She had Fafnir hide boots and gloves that were spiked with drakon teeth, and that wasn't the worst part. She had double swords strapped to her back, a whip coiled to her left side, an overly large war axe slung to her right, and there were daggers sticking out of her boots.

Ani was pressed up against my side. "Do you think we could take her?"

I shook my head. "Let's just hope that we don't have to."

As we approached the clearing, the girl stopped and turned to us. "Alright," She regarded us both in turn. "The trod's here so I'm going, see ya around." She then turned and disappeared through a gap in the trees.

Ani started. "Wait, what?" She looked at me. "What was that all about? How did she know your name?"

I blinked. I've never seen that girl before in my life- which was actually rather surprising. "I don't know. I never met her before."

"Oh."

I looked back at the trod and grinned. "Well at least we didn't have to kill it ourselves- though that would have been fun, I don't think it would have been very quick." I looked around warily. "Well, I guess we should go, maybe we'll actually get to Boston!"

She nodded and took my hand. "We go on three."


	11. Boston

**Hello my readers, haha I finally finished this chapter! It's Friday! I'll be sure to update some more on the weekend. So leave a comment, and don't worry, the heavily armed girl will show up again, she just wasn't needed in this chapter. lol **

Ani POV

"One… two… Three!" I jumped through the trod, yanking him through behind me, the air around us shimmered and the world went white for a second. A wave of nausea hit me hard as I stepped through into the mortal world. It was dark, dank, and stunk worse that a festering Fogpod fruit. My eyes adjusted to the gloom and I looked around. We appeared to be underground. I looked around. The girl from earlier was nowhere in sight.

Puck stepped next to me. "Right, _that's _why I stopped using this trod. We're down in what the mortals call the sewers."

I looked around. "What are sewers?"

Puck took my hand and started leading me along behind him, he stepped out of the water and up onto a small pathway. "You really don't want to know."

I stepped onto the narrow platform and walked along behind him. "How do we get out of here?"

Puck flicked a hand at me. "Leave it to me. Sadly, I've been down here many times over the years." We walked in silence for what seemed like a long time until I saw a round panel over our heads. Puck looked at me. "This is one of the few covers that are fey friendly and isn't made of iron." He grabbed hold of an unnervingly metal ladder and started to climb it. Once at the top, he pushed up on the round thing and light flooded the man made cave. He looked back at me with a grin that stretched completely across his face.

"Welcome to Boston, city of traffic, iron, and other nasty things."

As he said this, he climbed out and I followed him. Once We were both out, I looked around. There were large steel buildings and cars all over the place. As I was walking, he pulled me out of the way of a mortal man who gave me a dirty look as he passed.

Puck looked at me with a cute smirk. "You aren't glamoured, the mortals will walk into you unless you avoid them."

I nodded and he looked around with a sigh. "I don't know where we are."

I stared at him. "You mean this isn't Boston?"

He laughed. "Don't worry, Frosty, I know that this is Boston, I just don't know the street name."

I looked around at the chaotic city. "What's a street?"

Puck pointed to a rather large stretch of stone that marred the land around us. "That's a street, just think of it as a path." He looked around. "Well, I guess we should look for a place that mortals are afraid of."

I smirked at him before he could start walking. "Clothes. You said that we could get new ones."

He laughed. "You're really stubborn, you know that? Okay, clothes. Let's find a store."

After walking around for a short time, we came to stop in a plaza. Puck looked around and pointed to a store that said "You want clothes? Come Here!" on the sign that was taped below the Open sign on the door. As we approached, I saw that the building was much smaller than the surrounding ones, and the "Open" sign had the words "Fifty Percent Off Sale!" crossed out below it.

Puck looked at the building. "This seems good enough, do you have any paper on you?"

I blinked. "No, why would I have paper?"

He walked over to the door and ripped the sign off it. Tearing in half, he grinned. "Nevermind, I found some."

He glamoured it, and it now had a picture of him on it. He waved it towards me. "Credit card," He grinned wickedly. "easy to make, and mortals will take it for anything." He looked back at the beat up little store. "Come on, before this thrift shop goes out of business and we have to find a different store."

He gently took my hand and we walked side by side through the doors. The door was made of old cracked wood and it opened with a squeak. A bell rang as we entered and I followed Puck down a few aisles. We stopped in front of a rack that had girl clothing on it and he turned to me with a grin. "Go through this rack." He pointed around at three other ones. "Those also have girl clothes, I'll be right back."

He disappeared behind some other racks and I was now alone. I turned back to the clothes and started going through it.

"Hi there sweetie!" Said a chirpy voice behind me.

I jumped and spun around. There was an elderly woman smiling warmly at me. "Need any help with finding something?" She looked at me closely. "What size are you? I might be able to find something that will look nice on you."

I blinked in confusion at the woman. "Size?"

She laughed. "Why of course! You can't wear it if it doesn't fit you, silly!" She continued to smile at me. "What size is the shirt that you're wearing now?"

I smiled back, though I was still somewhat confused. "I don't know, my mother always picked out what I wore." That wasn't a lie, Mab always did have things fitted for me.

The woman looked at me in confusion, but didn't comment. She turned to a shelf and picked up some dark blue jeans. "Go try these on, the fitting room is right this way…" She started walking across the store and I scrambled to follow her. She was surprisingly fast for her years. The woman stopped. "Try your clothes on in here, sweetie." and then she walked away to go help another customer standing nearby.

After I tried on the pants, I found that they fit me fine. Now I needed a shirt. I went back to the racks that Puck showed me earlier and found an emerald green lightweight hoodie, I grinned and picked it up. It reminded me of a certain redhead who was currently across the store pretending not to watch me. I rolled my eyes and smiled. I had to get this.

I threw it on over my current shirt and it was the perfect length, the sleeves were even slightly long- just the way I liked them. I took it back off and headed back towards Puck. I didn't know the mortal customs for _purchasing _something with _currency_. Those two words were just present in my vocabulary. I didn't understand how they worked.

I rounded the rack of clothes and came face to face with Puck- who had on an evergreen hoodie that looked just like his last one, but was a different shade of green. He glanced at my clothes that I was holding and grinned as if he didn't know I chose them. "Nice colors, I wonder where they came from."

I shrugged. "They look good together."

Just as he was about to respond, the elderly woman appeared from behind a rack. "Ah, there you are sweetie. I was checking up on you to make sure you found something." She glanced at Puck and grinned at us. "Oh, I see you have help." She smiled at Puck and walked away saying something about cute kids.

Puck obviously heard her, because he laughed.

We watched her disappear out of our sight, then he turned back to me. "Are you ready?"

I nodded and he led me to the front of the store. We stopped at a counter, and Puck showed the woman his "credit card", she swiped it through a strange machine, then she put our clothes in a bag. After telling us to come again, the woman walked away and we left.

We walked out into the bustling streets of Boston and weaved through the crowd until we stepped into an alley between two buildings. Puck looked around. "Okay, so we have to find a place that mortals don't like to be near. That's easy." He started listing off places and I looked at him.

"Puck, I somehow get the impression that the Key of Death won't be found in a courtroom, or in a high school for that matter." I paused. "Are there any haunted places or cemeteries?"

He sighed. "Yeah, theres this small cemetery at the edge of the city. Supposedly it's really creepy and mortals think it's haunted." He flicked his hand. "They always think it's a haunting. Why aren't there any rumors that a place is cursed? That's much more likely." He crossed his arms and looked at me. "So I take it that the creepy graveyard is our first choice?"

I nodded. "Yeah, that's as good a place as any for someone to hide a cursed token."

He looked at the ground. "Why does that cat always make someone else do his dirty work?"

"I don't know, so let's get going already."

We started out again, and decided to glamour ourselves invisible- we would get through crowds faster, and no one would give us trouble unless they were fey.

After walking for what felt like a long time, we finally came to a wrought iron fence that was rusting. I looked at it, the gate was closed and locked, and the top had spikes- not that I'd actually climb up that metallic hell, but it was still good to know.

Puck inspected it with distaste, then turned back to me. "I hope that the fence doesn't go deep underground, we have to tunnel our way through."

I blinked at him. "Won't that attract a grim?"

He laughed in amusement. "Let's worry about that once we're on the other side."

I blinked at him. He actually looked forward to being chased by the grim, I, for one wasn't though.

"Okay, I guess you're right." I glanced at the ground below the fence. "Let's get digging, the faster we're in, the faster we can get out again."

Puck bent down and started scratching at the ground. "That's the spirit, Frosty! No let's go!"

I laughed and got down on my hands and knees beside him.

After digging, cursing, and having Puck laugh at me for awhile, we finally had a crawl space big enough to get through. I wriggled through it on my stomach, then stood on the other side. "It's big enough, come through." I turned but Puck wasn't there anymore. Just as I was whipping my head around to look for the trickster, a large raven landed on my shoulder, it had emerald green eyes.

I blinked at it. "Puck?"

He bobbed his head, hopped to the ground, and shifted back to his normal form.

He sat there laughing. "You panicked."

I scowled to hide my burning cheeks. "I did no-" The lie wouldn't come and he laughed even harder, I glowered at him. "Fine, I was worried."

He got up with a smug smirk and brushed off his pants. "Let's find a grave to rob." Then he turned around and started walking towards the head stones.

I ran to stop him. "Wait! Shouldn't we think this through more? We can't search every tomb while playing keep away with the grim."

Puck paused. "Okay, how about we search for the place with the most negative glamour. The token sounds like it's powerful, so it should be easy to find."

I nodded and stepped up beside him, I didn't need him opening the first grave he saw.

Before we continued, I took one last look at him, our bag from earlier was gone. I sighed. New clothes just weren't meant to be.

"Well, let's go!" I started walking through the dreary landscape and came to the conclusion that there was obviously a curse of some sort on this place because unlike the rest of Boston, this place was mucky, moldy, and fog hung in wisps all around us.

We passed many graves, and each time I felt different emotions coming from them. One had happiness, another, sadness, and we finally found one that may match what we were looking for.

A shiver ran down my back. Death, anger, sadness… all of them in one. I looked at Puck, he felt it too.

He shook himself. "I think we found it, let's go tomb raiding." He tried to grin, but I could tell that it was fake.

We slowly approached the tomb and looked at it. It was as big as a shed, and there were decorative crosses and flowers carved into it. I looked at the door, I could practically _see_ the darkness trying to escape from what lie within.

Puck swallowed, even the usually spunky crimson haired faery was affected by all the negative glamour that was present. "Should I open the door, or do you want to?"

I put my hand on it. "I'll do it." I gave a hard push, nothing. I leaned into it as hard as I could, the door wouldn't budge. I gave one last shove, a snarl tearing itself from my lips, and the door flew open, I lost my balance and fell inside. I cursed and stood. Puck was it the doorway with his hand on the door.

"Maybe I should've warned you that I was going to help."

Before I could respond, a blood chilling howl split the eery silence of the cemetery. Puck went wide eyed and quickly stepped inside, closing the door behind him.

"We have to find the key, and get out of here before that thing has a chance to eat us for dinner." As if to prove his point, a loud thump came from the door, the whole crypt shook and some loose stones fell from the ceiling.

I looked around madly for the key, only to find a pair of skeletons holding hands with each other. I cursed as another forceful crash came from the door.

"Frosty…" I heard Puck warn. "Anytime today would be great…"

"Hold on a second!" I snapped back in annoyance. "I can't find it!" I looked at the long dead couple, then finally found the key. It was tied to a nasty looking string around the neck of the skeleton to the right of me. I lunged and snatched it just as the door busted open with a deafening crash. I turned just in time to see Puck dive out of the way of the grim. I flung myself to my side as the monster came crashing towards me.

"Princess! We have to go _now!" _Puck yelled over the sounds of chaos.

"I'm right behind you!" And I was. I nearly trampled him when we ran out of the crypt.

I sprinted after Puck, and when I finally caught up with him, we ran side by side. He laughed. "So, how do you like the mortal world so far?"

I glanced at him sharply. He was cracking jokes. While running for his life from a very ticked off grim. I looked back in front of me. "Puck,"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. 'Don't tell jokes while running away from grims.'" He mimicked as if that was actually a rule. "Believe me, Frosty, I of all people know that."

I shook my head and fought down a smile. "So how are we going to get out of here?"

Puck looked around. "I think I have an idea." Then he stopped in his tracks.

I whipped my head over my shoulder. "What are you doing, you idiot?! Run!" I watched as the grim closed in on him, I was sure he was going to be killed… then he wasn't. He jumped straight up into the air at the last second, and landed on top of the grim. He whooped while throwing his fist into the air/.

"Come on Frosty, hop on!" He grabbed onto its fur and started riding it rodeo style. I stared at him, dumbfounded until it occurred to me that they were heading right towards me. And they weren't stopping.

"Jump!"

I listened to Puck's command and jumped as high as I could. He caught me with a muffled wump as we connected. The wind was knocked from my lungs, and I gasped for air. That felt like I was just hit in the stomach with a club.

After I was able to breath again, I looked out ahead of us.

We were rushing the fence at speeds where iron burns would be the least of our problems.

A strained voice. "Okay Icegirl, I need you to let go of me, and try to jump over the fence."

I blinked and realized that I had Puck in a death grip, I released him and looked back at the fence. It was much closer already.

"But-"

"Jump!" He shoved me off the grim's back, and for a moment, I had a strange weightless sensation. Until gravity caught up with me and I fell like a ton of bricks. I hit the ground hard and pain flared up from my ribs. I bit down a pain filled yelp and looked up just as Puck hit the ground next to me. He tucked into a roll and ended up sitting next to me, laughing.

"Well that was fun, let's do it again."

I tried to sit up, but the pain was too excruciating. I gasped and flopped back down on the ground.

I broke a rib.

I clamped my eyes shut, trying to ignore the pain as I had learned to do many years ago. When I opened them again, Puck was leaning over me with a concerned expression.

"You okay, Frosty?"

I nodded weakly and forced myself to sit, grinding my teeth as I did so.

He looked at me in faint annoyance, though I could sense that it was mostly concern. "Don't be like Iceboy. I swear, that whole 'Nothing hurts me' thing drove me nuts!" He looked at me. "Besides, you're in obvious pain."

I forced myself to my feet and the world turned yellow and started spinning from the pain. Puck caught me- I never even notice that he stood.

"Hey." His voice was soft in my ear. "We can take a break, you probably broke something." He lowered me to the ground and held me. "That annoying furball can wait awhile."


	12. The Return

**Thanks for the comments, and here's your reward! Another chapter! Haha, it's probably not as long as the last one, but it's mostly just character relationship and answering some questions. Enjoy :)**

Puck POV

I picked Ani up and she whimpered slightly. She went unconscious a few minutes ago, and when I checked her ribs, I found that three were broken. _Damn, she has a high tolerance to pain if she could make herself stand through that. _

Something fell to the ground with a clatter and when I looked down, I found the key. I bent and picked it up. It was on an old leather string, and the key itself was made of bone. It appeared to have shadows and darkness writhing around it. I looped it around my neck uneasily, I didn't want to carry it, but better I carry it than Ani. I stood up again. I should bring her to a more populated area so she would heal faster.

A sound behind me interrupted my thoughts. I spun carefully so I wouldn't injure the limp girl in my arms.

"Hello, Robin."

The girl from earlier was there, she stood a few feet away from me and I retreated a step. I didn't want any more harm to come to Ani. "Who are you?" I asked. She simply smiled, though there was a touch of sadness to it.

"So you really don't remember me?" She laughed. "Robin, I'd think that you'd remember me of all people."

I glared at her. She was making it sound like I was forgetful. "What the hell are you talking about?"

She rolled her eyes. "It's me, Autumn."

I blinked rapidly and staggered back a few more steps. _Autumn!? _I stared at her. This girl had brown hair, violet eyes, a grey t-shirt, camouflage cargo shorts, and no similarities with Autumn.

"If you think you're fooling me, you should know that you aren't." I looked at her. She did kind of sound like Autumn though… her speech patterns and the way she held herself in the same manner. I shook myself. Autumn is long gone. She faded away years ago.

"The Nevernever returned me after I faded. I was put into this new body and I've been this way ever since."

I looked at her suspiciously. Only she would know the answer to this. "Did you like the nickname I gave you?"

The girl nodded. "I liked it when you called me Fall, I just never let anyone know that because it would make me look like a pushover."

I gaped at her. "Fall!" She laughed at me.

"I never thought that I would strike _you_ speechless! Oh, and nowadays, I'm called Mal, but I suppose that wouldn't matter to you anyways." She flicked her hand in my direction dismissively, then looked at the key around my neck. "You do know that that thing is supposedly cursed?"

I blinked. "All I know is that Furball wants it."

She looked at me in confusion. "Furball?"

I started walking- I still had to help Ani. "Long story, his name is Grimalken, he's a cat." I shook my head. "And if you ever meet him, _never _accept his help. You'll be indebted faster than you can say 'oh crap'.

She followed after me nodding. "I take it that you, somehow, were in his debt?"

I shook my head. "Ani, she owed him for something, so he sent her on this errand."

Fall looked at Ani warily. "And who is she?"

I bristled. "A frien-" I broke off my sentence, I didn't know what to call Ani. Was she my girlfriend? I think so. Friends don't kiss each other, or nearly get killed by grims for one another.

I looked at Fall. "She's my girlfriend." The words felt right on my tongue, as if they knew that they were the truth. I watched Fall's reaction.

She glanced at Ani, then back to me. "Cool." She nodded awkwardly, then looked at Ani again. "You do know that she has four broken ribs, right?"

I shook my head. "Only three. Wait- how did _you_ know that?"

Fall shrugged. "A side effect of being reborn I guess." She looked around, then picked some plants. After mashing them up, she handed them to me. "Have her swallow these, this herbal combination causes Winters to heal faster."

I took them. "Are you sure-"

"Just make her eat them."

I kneeled on the ground and gingerly laid her down. With one last glance at Fall, I put the bitter smelling poultice in Ani's mouth. Within ten seconds, Ani's eyes fluttered open. She sat up and poked her ribs, then turned to me questioningly. "How did I heal so fast?"

I went to introduce her to Fall, but when I turned around, she was gone. I stared at the place that Fall had been moments before. "How does she do _that?"_

Ani blinked. "How does who do what?"

I turned back and explained what had happened. After I was done, she narrowed her eyes at me. "And who exactly is Fall?"

I held my hands up. "Don't worry, we never dated or anything. She's just a hunting partner from a long time ago."

Ani relaxed, then blushed. "Sorry about that, I was out of turn."

I laughed. "It's okay. She was curious about you too."

Ani blinked and looked behind me, when I turned I found that the shopping bag from earlier was sitting on the ground, it's contents still inside. She let out an excited squeak and scrambled over to it. "I thought we lost this!"

I blinked. "Me too." I thought about it. _Did Fall bring it back for us? It wasn't there a second ago. _I walked over and caught my new-to-me hoodie as Ani threw it at me. She pulled out her stuff, hugged it to her chest, and looked at me awkwardly.

"Uh, Puck?"

"Yeah?"

Her face heated. "Turn around."

I blinked. "Oh- Oh, okay. Yeah, uh…" I turned around quickly, biting down the urge to tell her that I've seen plenty worse than what was involved in changing an outfit.

I waited a moment, then she spoke. "Okay, it's safe." She laughed. "I won't kill you if you turn around now."

I turned slowly, she now had dark blue jeans that were faded slightly at the knees, and green hoodie that was the same shade as my eyes. She bent and picked up her brown over the shoulder bag, then slung it over her head. Overall, she was beautiful.

She looked at me, then smirked. "Are you planning on staring at me all day? Or are you going to change?"

I started. "Oh, yeah…" I pulled off my current shirt and she blushed.

I smirked. This could be useful for a future prank.

I put my hoodie on and and changed my pants. At this point, she was turned around watching a nearby tree with forced interest. The tips of her pointed ears were bright red as she pretended not to care that I was just in my boxers behind her. I laughed as I buttoned my new-ish worn brown hunting pants. "You can turn around now, Icegirl. You won't be blinded for eternity."

She turned around slowly and looked at me. A grin spread across her face. "Nice hoodie, I like the color." She laughed. "I guess we were both thinking similar thoughts when we got this stuff.

I nodded. I was thinking about her at the time.

After stuffing our old clothes in the bag and abandoning it on the side of a road, we started walking again.

"So…" I started. "We have to track down Furball now?" I sighed in annoyance. "I've done that before, and I still think I deserve a freaking medal for it." I glanced at Ani and she laughed.

"I don't think it will be too difficult to find him, he'll probably just show up sooner or later for the key."

When she said 'key' an unnatural chill went through the air. I shivered from the sudden drop in temperature and she stared at the key around my neck.

"Did you feel that? The key just radiated glamour."

I nodded, the temperature returned to normal and I relaxed. I took off the key and looked at it, Fall's words echoed through my head.

_You do know that that thing is supposedly cursed?_

I blinked to clear my head. I was just freaking myself out… but when Ani was holding it, she _did_ break four ribs…

I stuck it in my pocket, I didn't feel comfortable having it around my neck.

I forced a laugh. "Let's just hope that the cat comes for it soon."

She smiled. "Yeah."


	13. The Key

**Oooooh, I wonder if it is cursed? xD depends on my mood… I might be feeling especially cruel later on. :) Anyways, here's the next chapter! Enjoy! **

Ani POV

I glanced at Puck's pocket. The key radiated shadows moments before. I shivered, that couldn't be good. Not to mention Puck looked like he was freezing for a second… I just hope that Grim shows up soon and takes this key. It was giving off all sorts of negative vibes and it was really starting to freak me out.

I looked at Puck, he looked slightly jumpy, as if he knew that there was something very wrong with the key he was holding too. We started walking.

We continued in silence until I couldn't take it anymore. "So, where do you think Grimalken is?"

He shrugged as we walked back into the city. "I don't know, maybe he's with the old chicken plucker, maybe he's watching us and we just don't know it yet…" His voice trailed off and he was staring at something.

I followed his gaze. There was a group of redcaps, exiles by the looks of them, up ahead of us. I glanced back at Puck. "You think we can take them?"

He narrowed his eyes as the leader of the mottley licked his fangs at us. "Easily."

He stepped forward and the gang of man eaters grinned at us, blood lust shining brightly in their eyes.

The leader spoke to his gang. "Look boys. Fresh meat, let's dig in."

Three others pulled rusty copper knives and glared at us. One of the larger ones grinned. "Sure thing boss."

Puck and I drew our daggers. His eyes flicked to me. "Are you sure you want to fight them? I'll be fine on my own."

I didn't move my eyes from the slowly advancing mob. "I'll be fine, I know how to use my glamour."

He nodded. "Okay, let's go then."

Before anyone even moved, I threw out my hand at the group in front of us and a lethal shower of ice shards scattered across the gap that separated us from them, multiple cries of pain rang out. That did it.

Three of them rushed me at once and I covered the nearest one head to toe in ice.

I smirked at the other two as the ice slowly overtook my first victim, his yells of pain and terror adding to the effect. "Who's next?"

They snarled and flung themselves at me, knives raised. I ducked to the side, drew my daggers, and stabbed one of them in the leg. He cursed and stumbled, fatal mistake. My ice quickly covered him as well. I looked back at my third attacker.

He licked his chops. "I didn't want to share you with them anyways, little girl."

I looked at the stumpy little gnome thing and snarled. "I'm not little." I took my blade and lunged at him, quickly slitting his throat before he could move, he fell to the ground.

Without a second look at the dead redcaps surrounding me, I looked at Puck. He was surrounded. I ran up behind a redcap and froze it. When two of the others spun to look at the new threat, I threw a handful of ice daggers at them, they shrieked as the pointed ice stabbed into them, then collapsed.

I looked up from them and saw Puck finish off the last one. It fell to the ground limply.

He glanced at it, then staggered backwards as if he was light headed. I rushed forward and fumbled to catch him. As I caught him under the arms, I noticed that he was bleeding from multiple gashes and he felt… _cold. _

Not in a dead corpse manner, or even in a Winter faery kind of way. I wouldn't have been able to feel those anyways. He felt cold in an unnatural way. As if the iciness that gripped him was a living, breathing, malicious thing. Something that was strong enough for a Winter fey to detect.

I lowered him to the ground and his glamour aura flickered. It was momentarily choked out by shadows… like the ones that I saw coming from the key.

Not knowing what I was doing, I quickly reached into his pocket and snatched the key out. I felt a wave of pure freezing cold pass through me sapping at my glamour and I threw the key down with a gasp. As soon as the evil token left my hand I felt normal again. I sighed in relief, that was frightening.

I turned back to Puck. He looked better at least. Though he was still limp on the ground. I ran my hand through his hair. _I hope he's okay. He's been holding that thing for quite awhile…_

"If I hold my breath long enough, will you do mouth to mouth?"

I jumped and looked at him. He was smirking and looking up at me with those gorgeous eyes of his.

I smacked him in the stomach and he laughed and rolled away.

"Don't do that." I scolded him. "I thought that you were seriously hurt."

He sat up and his hair fell into his eyes sloppily. He looked at the key on the ground. "That thing is cursed." He said matter of factly.

I blinked at him. "How do you know?"

"Fall told me, I just didn't believe her." He brushed his red hair from his face and regarded the discarded token warily. "So how are we going to bring it to furball if we can't touch it?"

I looked at it. "I don't know… it seems to sap glamour and makes injury more likely…" I gestured at his scratches and he quickly glamoured them invisible. "We'll just have to take turns carrying it I guess. That way we will both have some time away from it."

Puck nodded. "Sounds good." He stood with a quiet exhale of breath, wobbled before gaining his footing, then laughed. "I still feel kinda out of it. I should be fine though." He looked at the key dryly. "This is going to be fun… I've always wanted to hand deliver a cursed token to who knows where."

I wracked my brain for places that Grim could be. I came up with the Bone witch swamp, the tree he tends to sleep in, or off somewhere cashing in on favors. Nothing that was promising.

I bent and picked up the key, at the moment it wasn't sapping glamour.

Puck watched me, worry clear on his face. "Are you okay? Not light headed or anything?"

I laughed and looped the unnerving piece of jewelry around my neck. "Don't worry, I'm fine." I held it up from my chest. "See? It's not leeching my energy."

He relaxed slightly, but still seemed kind of off his normal beat.

_The boy isn't letting on just how much energy I took out of him. _I started at a voice and glanced at Puck, he paid no mind to it. _Insolent girl. _The voice droned. _He cannot hear me. Only the person that wears me may hear my voice. _It scoffed. _Though you aren't much. I'll take my time with you when your time comes. _

My heart skipped a beat. When my time comes…

The voice started droning on in my head, but I tuned it out. I managed a smile, at least Puck wasn't holding this demented thing anymore. _I wonder if he was hearing this voice too._

"Hey, Icegirl." My attention snapped to the redhead who was currently waving his hand in my face. "We have to find Furball. I don't like that thing and want to get rid of it as soon as possible.

_Stupid boy, he thinks that I am not sentient… he will pay dearly for that false assumption._

I swallowed and looked at Puck. "Yeah… we really should find Grim."

The key's voice went silent after that, and it never did start to sap my glamour, so I continued to carry it with me.

After cutting through what Puck called a parking lot, we crossed a few of the roads.

On the last road, a monstrous metal _thing_ nearly ran Puck over. Luckily, he dove out of the way just in time to avoid being squashed.

In my head, I heard the voice curse and start to plot another way to kill him. I cringed as it started raving about how fire would suit Puck well.

I attempted to tune it out once more and turned to Puck. "Are we almost back to the Nevernever?"

He shook his head, much to my disappointment. "Nah, we still have to get back to the sewers. The trod is about halfway across the city."

_Point A, to point B. _The key's voice sing songed gleefully in my head. _Rather far… plenty of ways to die._

I sensed it grinning- can an inanimate object even do that?

_I can get creative now._

I cringed. I didn't look forward to what it meant by 'creative'.

I turned to Puck, fully intending to tell him about the voice.

_Ah, ah, ah… _

I froze at the key's malicious voice.

_See that tree over there girl?_

I glanced at the tree behind Puck.

_I can think of at least twenty interesting ways to make it fall on the two of you… so be a good little girl for me. Okay?_

Puck looked at me. "Hey, what's wrong? You look like you just saw a ghost."

I shook my head. "I'm fine. It's still not effecting my glamour…"

I couldn't say much about anything else though.

**How was the last chapter? I have a thing for mental communication I think… all my stories have some form of it. lol so comment, comment, comment! I want your opinions.**


	14. Bad luck

**And so I am feeling cruel! lol I wonder what the key will throw at them this chapter…?**

Puck POV

I watched Ani. She was naturally pale, but she completely blanched for a moment there. She blinked. "W-what?"

Her voice shook slightly and she visibly flinched as if something shouted at her. She hung her head and looked up at me. "I told you… I'm fine. Let's get going already."

I shrugged. "Okay. As long as you say so." She nodded.

"Yeah, come on…"

I started leading us along again and not even twenty steps later I was nearly crushed by a rock that tumbled off a rooftop. I dodged out of it's path and a voice from overhead called out a swift apology. I stared at the rock. This was going to be a long walk. _Stupid key. The damn thing is out to get me or something._

The rest of the day went by like that. I nearly was hit by a few more cars, there was a knife throwing contest that we passed and I was mistaken for the target somehow, and some moron threw an anvil at me. How the hell do you _throw_ an anvil!? Jeez...

It was about midnight, so we decided to set up camp- in a hotel. I glamoured a piece of paper to look like a credit card again and checked us into the hotel. Once the woman got off the phone with the manager, she gave me a card key.

"Room 23. Floor B." She said in a boring monotone, she's obviously been working all day.

I nodded and led Ani over to the staircase. As we passed the desk, I changed a paper that was laying loosely on the floor into a very large spider. As the door closed behind me I heard the woman curse and the sound of something large thwacking the floor. I grinned. Poor spider.

I found the room, and led Ani in after I unlocked the door and pushed it open with a broom that I found a short ways down the hall.

The first thing I did when I entered the room was flop on the bed, being careful not to touch the metal frame. Then I looked at Ani. She quickly unlooped the key from her neck and hastily placed it on the nightstand. I knew that the key had something to do with all the close calls that took place between here and the graveyard, but I couldn't figure out how.

She sighed as if a large burden had been lifted off her shoulders then glanced at me. "We managed to survive so far." She smiled weakly. "All we have to do is give it to Grim, and we can go and do what we want."

I nodded groggily, I hadn't realized how tired I was until now. She walked over and climbed into the bed too. She must have been even more tired than I was because she fell asleep without another word.

I lay there. There were too many incidents today, my nerves weren't letting me sleep. I closed my eyes but all I could see was that stupid key…

I must have nodded off, because the next thing I knew, I was jerking awake. Lights were flashing and loud alarms were blaring. The acrid smell of smoke hung thick in the air and I sprung to my feet groggily. _Fire? What's burning?_

I looked around and saw that a candle that we never lit was tipped over and had started burning the curtains. I jolted fully awake and cursed.

Turning I looked at Ani, she was sitting up and staring at the flames in abject terror. She jumped to her feet, grabbed the key, then grabbed onto me and started towing me towards the door.

I stumbled. "What are you doing!?" I managed to spin in her grasp so I was facing forward.

"Saving your life." She snarled and shoved the obviously steel door open with her bare hands.

Once in the hallway, we looked around. It seemed as though other parts of the hotel had caught fire too because the stairway had smoke wafting out of it along with a hellish fiery glow flickering across the walls from down below.

Ani cursed. "Puck. We're using the elevator."

I stared at her. "Elevator? Those things are _not _fun Ani, _trustme_."

She laughed bitterly. "I'd kind of assumed that much. Now let's go!"

We sprinted towards the elevator doors and I hit the button. It lit up, but nothing else happened. I looked up with a curse, the meter at the top of the door was slowly climbing lower and lower from floor F. I glanced at Ani, she was staring back towards the stairs. I followed her gaze, the fire was now in the hallway with us.

I turned back to the door as it slid open. Grabbing Ani's hand, I hurled us both through the steel doors and into the metallic hell hole. She smacked the button that would lead us to the first floor and stood stiffly away from the walls of the small compartment.

To say that elevators were uncomfortable would be an understatement.

After the doors opened, we glamoured ourselves invisible and ran for the exit. No one stopped us as we sprinted past the counter, out the doors, and through a fire squad. Once we were back on the street, we slowed to a halt.

I coughed hard. Smoke and iron should never be mixed.

I turned to Ani, she was inspecting her burned hands, then dropped them to her sides nonchalantly when the realized that I was watching her.

She glanced back at the building. "We need to get moving again. It's too dangerous to stay in one place too long."

I nodded. "Yeah, you think? We need to get back to the Wyldwood, at least _there_, theres no iron."

She glanced at her burned hands. "Yeah... let's go."

She started to turn away, but I caught her arm gently. "Hey… You're okay right? You're acting strangely." I gestured at her burns. "Not to mention you thoroughly scorched your hands back there."

She looked like she was about to say something, but flinched and bit her tongue. She smiled instead. "I'm fine Puck. I'm used to having injuries, they're easy to ignore." She glanced behind me. "I think we should get moving again."

I looked at her in confusion. "Why? What's wrong?"

She tried to spin around again, but I held her fast. "Come on Ani…" I pleaded. "What's wrong? I want to help you."

She stared into my eyes. "Puck… I can't tell you…" Her voice broke. "You'll die." She stared at me pleadingly. "Don't make me tell you."

I sighed. I needed to know what was wrong. I started again. "Ani…"

Her eyes widened. "Puck, don't use the favor now. Dear God, anything else, just not this-"

"Tell me what's wrong."

She flinched as she tried to fight the compulsion to do as I asked.

I waited, this wouldn't take long.

"The… key." She tried to shut her mouth, but she couldn't fight it. "I-it's smart… it's out to get you, and if I tell you about it, it will try even harder to kill you." She stared at me in horror. "I don't want it to hurt you."

I blinked. That was all? A ticked off bad luck charm was out to get me? I laughed.

"That's what's wrong? Icegirl, I'm Robin Goodfellow. I'm much harder to kill than what you give me credit for." I pointed at myself and scoffed. "I don't think Oberon himself could easily kill me."

She smiled weakly at my joking attitude. "How about Mab?"

"Believe me, she's tried." I grinned at her. "So don't worry about me. If that thing wants to kill me, it'll have to try much harder."

She flinched. "You just _have_ to goad it, don't you?"

I nodded. "Yeah, pretty much."


	15. Jumped by demons

**Thanks for the reviews! lol Puck just **_**had **_**to say that. I would be worried about him if he didn't! As for why the key wants to kill him… well it seems like **_**everything**_ **wants to kill that boy, so I figured that a cursed token would be no exception! lol Keep reading! Things are about to get screwed eight ways from Sunday! lol**

Ani POV

I stared at Puck in terror as the key started shouting about him in rage.

_That STUPID boy! Why I oughta… I'm going to kill him. It's as simple as that. He's going to die._

I heard the key shout "DIE!" skull shatteringly loud and suddenly we were surrounded by small winged monsters that had talons as long as my finger. Their mouths were jam packed with ridged teeth and they had glowing blood red eyes. I stared around the the street, and as I moved, one of the creatures shrieked.

It came ripping across the road towards us.

That's when all hell broke loose…

The other five creatures dove towards us, talons outstretched, eyes gleaming madly. Puck and I ducked, I hit the pavement hard and looked up to see another demon round on me. As it lunged I rolled away and pulled my daggers. This was going to get messy.

I rolled to my feet and jumped over another attacker, slashing it's side as I did so. It shrieked in pain, but didn't waver. It spun on me and lunged, I dodged out of the way and into the path of another one. It blinked at me then snapped its jaws at me. Before I even had time to think, I threw out my hand and a spray of ice needles shot into its face.

It whipped it's head to the side and snarled. I blinded it. I lunged in at it and slashed its neck, warm liquid spattered my arms and face and I whirled on another monster. Before I could dodge it, a flare of pain coming from my back made me falter.

I looked behind me and saw that there was another creature- that had its razor sharp talons stabbed into me. It grinned wickedly at me, then ripped its hand loose from my flesh. I shrieked in agony, it had taken a minute to feel it for some reason.

The world started turning a hazy red but I ignored it. I had to help Puck. I grit my teeth and put the pain to the back of my mind, I would worry about it later. I held my hand out at two of the monsters and glared mercilessly at them.

"Go to hell."

I felt a burst of glamour, then there was a flash of blue light as I released the surge. I fell to my knees and looked up at Puck. He had two of the monsters caught in a snare he'd woven from vines, and he slitted the third ones throat with his daggers.

Everything was starting to spin, but I ignored it. I got to my feet, gritting my teeth in pain.

He looked at me, then gasped and went wide eyed.

I felt my self pitching forward, the keys evil voice cackling in my head.

_One down… one to go._

Blackness. That's all I remember beyond that.

That and Puck. I heard his pleading voice occasionally too. I guess that I was drifting in and out of consciousness for a long time, because when I finally came to I found that there was something tied around me tightly and I found a shirtless Puck next to me staring glassy eyed at the ground in between us.

As my foggy thoughts started to clear, memories of the fight came flooding back. I jerked and sat up.

"Puck!"

He started and stared at me speechlessly. Then realization dawned in his eyes and he flung himself at me. We clung to each other for a moment, and I realized that that not only was he shaking… he was crying. I pulled back.

"Hey... what's wrong?"

He stared at me wordlessly and I blinked. Why was he staring at me?

I looked down and suddenly knew why he was shirtless. His jacket was tied around me tightly and crimson was seeping through it, slowly dying the once green fabric a vibrant red. I turned and looked at the ground behind me. I was sitting in a puddle of blood. My blood.

I blinked and slowly looked back at him and smiled weakly. "That explains why you're shirtless."

He nodded and looked at the puddle. "I thought you died."

I hugged him again. "Puck, I am extremely hard to kill. I'll be fine."

"But… I watched you collapse. You lost alot of blood." He looked at me. "The bleeding won't stop."

I glanced at the slowly spreading crimson stain. "I can see that." I met his gaze. "I'll be fine… trust me. I've lived through worse."

He held me. "We need to get you to a healer."

I nodded. I couldn't argue with him there.

Puck stood. "Do you need help?" He watched me warily. "I don't want you to get even more hurt."

I waved him off. For some reason I wasn't in any pain.

I slowly got to my feet, I felt slightly light headed, but other than that, I was fine.

I focused. No, no pain, suppressed or otherwise.

"Hey, you okay?" Puck stepped closer to me. "I don't want you passing out on me Icegirl."

I nodded. "I feel fine, I'm just a little off balance, that's all."

He nodded but didn't back up. "Just… don't push yourself. Okay?"

I smirked at the redhead. "What? Are you afraid I don't know my limits? I know when I'm not fit for travel."

He nodded, but I could see the doubt in his eyes. "Alright, as long as you say so."

I crossed my arms over my chest and raised my chin. "I do say so."

He held up his hands in surrender. "Okay, we can go." He gestured ahead of himself. "After you Ice Princess."

While we were walking, I noticed that the key was staying silent ever since the last incident. I wasn't sure if I should be relieved or worried, so I just tried to ignore it.

We made our way across half the city, and finally arrived at our destination. The sewers.

We dropped down into the dark underground passageway, it took a minute for my eyes to adjust, and the dizziness from earlier never did pass… if anything, I'd say that it's gotten worse.

At this point, I'd dropped back behind Puck, so when he stopped in his tracks I nearly walked into him. I peeked around him. "Why are we stopping?"

He glanced around. "I'm pretty sure that we've already passed that ladder."

I looked around, we have been here before. I glanced back at him as a wave of nausea passed through me. I ignored it. "I think so too… are we going in circles?"

He shook his head and for a second, his red hair looked like it was on fire, I blinked to clear my vision.

"We shouldn't be. I know this route well enough to not get lost."

I blinked. "Okay, then maybe it's just a coincidence."

He looked at me sharply. "We're fey. There's no such thing as _coincidences_."

I shrugged. I really didn't care either way. The world was spinning, Puck's hair kept catching on fire, and I was content. I giggled. "We don't need to go back anyways, that Grimalken can come find us himself."

Puck turned and looked at me, he looked into my eyes with his gorgeous ones. He sighed. "Ani, I think you're hallucinating."

I found this quite funny and busted out laughing. I leaned into him and continued having giggling fits.

He hugged me lightly and ran his hand through my hair. "Yeah, you're hallucinating alright."

I suppressed a shiver. The yummy faery boy was touching me. I relaxed into him. "You know, you're pretty cute Puck. You know that, right?"

He picked me up bridal style. "Yeah, and I'm going to assume that if I take advantage of this moment, that you'll kill me later." He sighed. "I'll get us out of here."

He started walking again and I nestled into his arms and nodded off.


	16. Furball returns

Puck POV

I don't know what the hell those things were… but it's obvious that they had some sort of poison on their claws. I blinked multiple time to clear my foggy thoughts, then I glanced down at my shoulder, one of them managed to scratch me too… I just hope that I can get us to a healer in time…

After walking a short while, I had to sit down. I was starting to get dizzy, and every other ladder looked like the last. I laid Ani across my lap and shook my head to clear my thoughts again. This was not good, for all I knew, we passed the trod hours ago… or even minutes. I lost track of time awhile ago. I heard movement in the distance and got to my feet. I was in no condition to fight- I felt like I had one bottle too many of plum wine. I shifted Ani around so I was carrying her piggy back, that would help in case I had to defend us.

I started walking again, it was taking all my focus, but I think I got us back on the right route. I was tap dancing on the edge of blacking out when I stumbled upon the trod. I sensed the energy around it- and for one terrifying moment, I couldn't remember why I was looking for it.

I mentally slapped myself upside the head, and blundered over to it. Once I got us through, I collapsed to the ground. The world was spinning out of whack and I definitely felt like I had too much to drink.

I must have went under, because the next thing I knew, there was a very sharp claw being jammed in places that claws should never go. I yelped and jolted. Something heavy was on top of me and I was having a hard time moving.

An amused purr. "Calm down Goodfellow. The girl is on top of you."

I relaxed and wiggled out from under Ani. I somehow took a facer out of the trod. When I looked up, there were three Grimalkens, all of them looking at me in a patronizing fashion. I scowled.

"Furball, it was bad enough that time when there were two of you… this is just ridiculous."

They cocked their heads to the side. "Goodfellow, I assure you, there is indeed only one of me present. You appear to be suffering the ill effects of a venom."

I nodded. "We got jumped by demon things." I glowered at him. "Because of the key. The frigging thing is cursed."

Grimalken moved on to cleaning his tail. "As all tokens of death are, Goodfellow."

I turned to Ani and unlooped the demented thing from her neck. I tossed it to the cat in front of me. "Take it, if you're lucky it'll kill you quickly."

"It will not harm me Goodfellow."

"Oh yeah? Why's that?"

The apparently solo cat blinked at me. "I am a cat." He looked at Ani and sighed. "Shall I lead the two of you to a healer?"

I nodded. "Yeah, that sounds good. Just don't pull that disappearing act of yours. I can barely focus on anything that's stable."

Grimalken turned. "Do try and keep up." And he started trotting away without another word and I fumbled to pick Ani up.

Let's just say, trying to follow Furball on a good day was difficult. He kept fading out of sight, just to reappear on a nearby rock or tree branch. Quite a few times, he disappeared and I was left on my own. Then he would reappear and 'inform' me that I was heading in the wrong direction.

We finally got to a healer after walking for what felt like a long time. I was tired, sore, and the ground was now laughing mockingly at me.

I scowled at it. "Shut up."

It continued to laugh, and the elusive cat glanced back at me. "No one is addressing you Goodfellow."

"Tell that dirt faced mother of pains that…"

Furball turned his back to me. "We are at the healer. She should help you two." He cocked his head to the side and looked at me. "You brought her a nice plump juicy mouse, right?"

I blinked. That was definitely a hallucination.

The cat then turned around and trotted off into the woods, taking the key with him. My shoulders slumped. I felt like a rather heavy burden was lifted off me… and it's pretty clear how I feel about those.

I started towards the door but before I reached it, it swung open.

"Out! Get out of here you dirty mercenary! OUT!"

Someone was shoved out the door and we collided. My feet were knocked from under me and I went crashing to the ground. I gritted my teeth to keep from cursing at the ground who was laughing it's head off at me.

There was a brisk apology and the girl jogged past me. I heard the clatter of weapons as she passed.

I blinked and looked up at who I assumed was the healer.

She looked at me and growled. "Goodfellow…" The door slammed shut and I sat there. What the hell just happened?

I lowered Ani to the ground and staggered towards the door. I knocked.

"Go away! I'm not gonna help _you!"_

I cringed. What did I do to _this_ person? "My friend and I got poisoned. We need medicine."

The door flew open and I saw a short woman with wrinkled skin glare at me. "I'm not falling for that again Robin! Now shoo!" She started waving a knife at me and I backed up a step.

I held up my hands. "Okay, okay. Jeez, I get it. You don't want to help me." I glanced back at Ani. "If you won't help me, at least heal her, she doesn't know you."

The healer narrowed her eyes at Ani. "Who's she?"

I blinked. I promised that I wouldn't tell anyone who Ani was. "She's my girlfriend."

The woman narrowed her eyes at me. "Was she raised in a barn like you?"

I smirked. "No, she wasn't raised in a barn."

"Have you slept with her?"

I raised an eyebrow. "What? No- I haven't slept with her!"

The woman looked at me. "You're hallucinating aren't you?"

"Yeah, how did you-"

"I didn't ask if you've done anything to the girl, Robin."

I closed my mouth. I was sounding more stupid by the minute.

The healer looked from me to Ani and sighed. She opened to door wider. "Get in here."

I picked Ani up and rushed through the door before the healer had a chance to change her mind.

The woman entered behind us and pointed to the beds on the other side of the room. "Just don't be a nuisance to my other patients."

I looked around and saw a few more beds that were occupied. I nodded. "Sure."

The healer walked away, leaving me alone with the unconscious Ani. I walked over to a bed and laid her gently on it, being careful not to jostle the jacket that I had tied around her.

I walked over to the other bed and flung myself onto it. I didn't care that I was shirtless and covered in blood. I was exhausted.


	17. The healer's

**Thanks for the comments! They keep me writing lol. The last few chapters were interesting to say the least, what with the characters hallucinating and all that. The key is gone, but not every problem is solved...**

Ani POV

I started awake at a strange pain. It was coming from my back and as my murky thoughts cleared it grew stronger. I twitched, It was really starting to hurt. I looked around, I was on a bed, and I didn't remember getting here. Trying to sit up, I flopped back down, the pain turned my vision red and I soon came to the realization that I couldn't move.

I turned carefully and saw that Puck was flopped on a bed next to me. He had his jacket back and the blood stain was gone.

"Puck!" I hissed. The two of us must have been kidnapped! I forced myself to my feet, gritting my teeth to ignore the pain. "Puck!"

There was motion behind me and I was immediately holding an ice blade to my attackers throat. "Who are you!? Why are we here!?"

The woman was short, wrinkled, and glowering at me. "You two are here because Goodfellow said you weren't raised in a barn. Now put that thing down before I have to drug you again."

I blinked. Again? I lowered my hand. "What do you mean?"

The woman curled a lip at me. "I mean, you would be dead right now if I didn't heal you."

"Are you a healer?"

"Yes, and not a pin cushion as you thought when you had woken up the previous few times." She gave me a dirty look and turned away from me, muttering something about wretched Unseelies under her breath as she did so. "I suggest you rest. You don't want to reopen the wound on your back, nasty thing it was. You kept waking up and trying to strangle me when I was kindly trying to stitch it for you."

"If I remember right," Said Puck's voice from behind me. "I forced you to stitch her up after having a rather lengthy argument with you over morals."

I turned and saw Puck glaring at the healer. "And that only happened because I offered to steal your entire herb stash."

The healer glowered at the two of us. "I could still kick you out. I threw that Mal girl out on her ears and I'm not afraid to do so towards you."

I blinked. She threw Mal out? Why didn't I remember this? Puck came up and hugged me from behind.

"And I could do some rather creative things to this cottage of yours. I don't think you'd like that very much."

I smiled. He was even attractive when he was threatening people.

The woman glared at him. "Fine. Have it your way Goodfellow." She then turned and walked away, leaving me alone with Puck.

I spun in his arms. "So you got us here?"

He nodded. "I passed out and Furball found us." He paused. "Then he led us here… but I was poisoned too, so it's hard to remember."

I nodded. "Is it safe to assume that this 'argument' took place when I was still bleeding all over the place?"

The redhead smirked. "Yeah…" He rested his chin atop my head. "I had to offer to give this little home of hers the special Puck Touch. Then she was willing to help you." He paused in hesitation. "Ani… she recognized you. She knows you're the ice princess."

I stiffened. She could inform Mab… she might have already. "Did she turn me in?"

"Nah, I might have made a little deal with her to keep her quiet."

I pulled back and looked at him sharply. "What did you offer?"

"Oh, nothing. I just offered not to steal the entire contents of this house while she slept."

I laughed and leaned into him, the pain almost forgotten. "Well isn't that a bargain."

We stayed like that until one of the injured fey on the other side of the room shouted at us to break it up or get a room. I pulled back and blushed. Way to ruin a moment.

Puck just laughed. "You should rest, that scratch isn't fully healed yet."

I nodded. It hurt a lot more than it did when I first got it.

He looked at me worriedly. "Does it hurt bad? I barely got scraped and it hurt like a mother when the poison left my system."

I nodded. "I could could barely stand when I first woke up."

He cringed. "Ouch. Though this doesn't even come close to taking a bullet." I could tell that he was trying not to shiver. "That's never fun."

I looked at him. Why was someone shooting at him?

He waved it off. "Happened awhile ago. It's not a big deal now."

I nodded. "Well I probably should try to rest."

"Yeah."

I went back to the bed and drifted off.

I felt like not even ten minutes had passed before I was being shaken awake again. I opened my eyes and found Puck hovering over me. His voice was low. "Something's going on outside, come on."

I looked into his emerald green eyes and knew that he was serious. Something bad was about to happen. I got to my feet and flinched at the pain, it wasn't unbearable though, so I continued to stand. "What do you mean?" I whispered in fear. Did Mab find me?

Puck was squinting out the he just opened window. "I don't know. I can't see them from here." He backed up and looked at me. "Stay here, I'll be right back." And before I could respond, he turned into a raven and flew out the window.

I looked around unsure if I should hide or not. I didn't want to get caught if they were looking for me… but there was nowhere to go. I stood there straining to listen. I didn't hear anything other than the quiet whimpering of the fey around me. Then a door opened.

"Princess Anita, we are here to retrieve you. Come out." I froze at the sound of the icy voice. He was definitely a guard.

I heard shuffling as more guards entered.

"There's no place to run, we've got you surrounded Princess. You can make things easier by coming freely."

A quiet exhalation. "Hell no…"

I turned and saw that Puck had returned. There was a feather caught in his hair and his emerald eyes were gleaming slightly in the moonlight. I tore my eyes away from my companion. Now was not the time to be swooning over him.

There was a loud bang, and someone yelped in pain. They were flipping the beds.

"Come out! We don't have all day… jeez this girl is bothersome."

A few more voices agreed and another bed was flipped. Luckily, this time it was empty. I heard footsteps approaching the corner that would lead them into the room that me and Puck were currently occupying.

Puck glamoured himself invisible and I followed suit. It was very unlikely that it would help, but it was worth a try.

The guards rounded the corner and one of them pointed at us. "Over there!" He said disdainfully. "She's with that Summer!"

Puck cursed under his breath and looked at me. "Okay princess, I was hoping that this could wait, but you need to learn how to fly."

I backed away from the approaching guards. "How long should that take?"

He sighed, eyes never leaving the enemy. "Longer than we have." He yanked his hand through his hair. "Much longer…"

I nodded. "We have to do something though, so how do you do it?"

"The same way you glamour yourself invisible. Just turn into a bird instead."

"That was very helpful, Puck."

He glanced around. "If you have any other ideas I'm all ears."

I looked at the advancing guards. My glamour was currently being used to heal me, I couldn't freeze them... or maim them for that matter. I pulled my daggers and Puck raised an eyebrow.

"Really? That's your idea?"

I scowled at the oncoming group. "It's better than running."

He drew his daggers. "True."

I unglamoured myself, hoping that I would be able to use it to defend myself if necessary. _I might have enough energy for one attack… I'll have to time it right though. _

I grinned, it's all or nothing.


	18. She's drunk

Puck's POV

Things like this were usually right up my alley, be a general pain in the butt _and_ keep the queen of Unseelie from retrieving her wayward daughter? That has Robin Goodfellow written all over it. I hid my cringe, this was just fabulous, we were not in good enough condition to fight- I might be able to, but I could tell that Ani was just putting on a brave face.

One of the knights gave me a scrutinizing look. "_Goodfellow?_ What the hell are you doing here?"

I smiled innocently and laced my fingers behind my head. "Who me? Oh nothing, I got poisoned the other day and managed to drag my half dead carcass over here." I flashed a smirk at the weary knights. "I also rescued your princess from numerous things over the last few days, you're welcome."

Ani shot me an exasperated look and I bit down a chuckle, I still had it.

The knight that spoke earlier straightened. "Her highness is Unseelie. She doesn't need to be saved by the likes of _you_."

I mock flinched. "Ouch, that hurt alot. Care to keep going?"

The knight looked like he was going to say something back, but the leader silenced him with a wave. "Be quiet you fool, can't you see he's just goading you? He wants to start a fight."

I smiled disarmingly and batted my lashes at them innocently. "Now why would I be trying to do that?"

The first one bared his teeth at me in an animalistic manner and drew his sword, it was silver. "You want a fight? Is that it?"

I squinted at them. "Yeah… but that piece of tinfoil won't help you much."

He glared at me. "And why's that?"

"I have something better." As I said this, I nonchalantly stuck my hand in my pocket, closing my fingers around the previously forgotten fogpod fruit from a few days ago.

Two more guards drew their swords and glanced at my now hidden hand. One of them narrowed his eyes at me from under his visored helmet. "What are you up to, Goodfellow?"

I pulled the fruit out and held up my hands, the soldiers blinked in confusion and I smirked. "Oh nothing, I just want to give you guys a present." I hurled it at the ground in front of them and it burst as it made contact with the hard surface. The rancid juice sprayed everywhere, some of it blinding a few of the guards. I laughed, making sure that I breathed through my mouth.

I reached for Ani's hand. "Come on, let's get out of here before they get their bearings."

She nodded and put her hand in mine. She smiled. "Puck, I don't care what anyone says, that was a good move."

I chuckled and swiftly led us past the squad of guards, the chaos had yet to die down as we stepped outside. I glanced back at the healer's cabin. I almost felt guilty about wrecking it so badly…

Almost.

I smiled at Ani. "And that's what she gets for ratting you out, that place is going to stink for a good long time." I drawled.

She laughed. "Remind me to stock up on those things, I think that trick would come in handy for me."

I nodded. "Are you still wondering why they would plant Fogpod in orchards?"

"No," She shook her head and looked back at the door. "Let's get out of here before they realize we're gone."

I followed her gaze and saw a guard stagger outside and vomit in the bushes. I nodded and bit down a smirk. _That'll teach you to mess with _my _ice princess!_

Ani reached for my hand. "Let's go."

We took off into the woods and kept running without ever looking back. At first there were sounds of pursuit, the it quickly into the natural sounds of the Wyldwood. We stopped, if we ran too far we might reopen our wounds. I blinked, Ani looked like she was fine for the most part. She seemed tired, but that was the only sign of our previous injuries.

I looked up into the dense canopy, the sky was completely blocked from view and I caught sight of a few wil-o-wisps drifting around hoping to lure travelers off course. I turned back to Ani with a grin. "So what are we going to do now?" I glanced back the way we came and saw some animals shuffling around the undergrowth. "We can't hang around the courts, and it seems that most fey will report us to Mab." I looked back at Ani.

She was watching me with a small smile. "We never did get to go to Central Park, why don't we start there?"

I glanced around but didn't recognize any landmarks that would show me where a trod was. "Yeah, we can go to Central Park, but we have to get to a trod first."

Ani nodded. "Well I don't see why we're just standing around here," She beamed excitedly at me. "Let's go track down a trod."

I laughed. "Okay Ice-girl, we'll do that."

We started out again, slowly this time, I wasn't worried about being tracked by those knights from before since they were so far behind us. I looked up, Ani was walking in front of me, there was a spring in her step and it was obvious that she was feeling better. I smiled, I thought _I_ was going to die when she collapsed that day. I thought about it, that happened about two days ago I think…

"Hey, what do you think will be at Central Park? I wonder if there's any unexplored trods?" Ani spun and was now walking backwards to look at me. She glanced over her shoulder unsteadily as if she feared another cliff would be in her path and dropped back so she was next to me instead. "What do you think?"

I laughed, it was good to see her so happy- maybe I should throw stink bombs at winter gentry more often- "I don't know, it's been awhile since I've been there."

She cocked her head to the side and blinked. "Why? I don't get the impression that it's because of Pushed-face and Snaggle-tooth." She giggled at the nicknames I gave the goblins and looked at me. "You enjoy stirring up trouble too much."

I had to admit, there is a certain appeal in trouble… okay, so I find very much joy in causing chaos. But there's nothing wrong with that, right?

Ani continued to guess. "You've been to busy?"

I shook my head. "Not even close."

"You're sick of the place?"

"Nah, I like Central Park." I looked at her and mock scoffed. "Come on Frosty, you can do better than this. Keep going."

She was quiet for a moment- in thought.

_Why have I been avoiding Central Park? _I thought. It wasn't because I'm too busy, or that I'm sick of the place… I've been outright avoiding it. _The last time I went there was… Meghan_.

Oh, that's why I don't go there anymore… it reminds me of Meghan.

I glanced at Ani and was actually kind of happy things didn't work out with the Iron Queen, if they had, I wouldn't have ever met this girl.

I blinked, Ani was waving a hand in my face- much like I do to her. "Hey, is it because of…" Her voice trailed off and she flushed. "Um you know… Meghan?"

I smiled. "Yeah, I think so."

She looked at her feet. "Sorry."

I shot her a confused look. Why was she sorry? Not like she did anything wrong. "What about?"

She glanced up at me. "I know how hard it is to talk about her for you."

I waved it off flippantly. "It's fine, I have to at least _try _to get over myself."

She looked at me. "It's really not. I don't know what I would do with myself if…" She trailed off and blushed at me.

I moved closer and put my arm around her shoulders. "It's fine. Besides, I have you now. And I'm not going anywhere."

She relaxed into me. "Good, I don't want you to."

We stayed like that for awhile until I heard something crack behind us, I narrowed my eyes at the sound because I also heard a muffled curse from the same direction. Ani tried to move, but I didn't budge. "Whoever you are, can't you please try to kill me another time? I'm kind of busy at the moment."

I felt Ani laugh against my chest. "What's to say that they're after you?" She whispered. "It might be the guards finally catching up with us."

We slowly turned and I looked up to see Fall, she blinked at us and slowly grinned. "There you are!" She staggered over to us waving a half empty plum wine bottle as she did. The liquid swished around in the container and I immediately knew that she was drunk, which was weird to see since she had a drinking problem back before she faded too.

She tripped over her feet and hit the ground- that was normal for her- what wasn't normal was that she instinctively tucked into a roll and leapt to her feet once more. She narrowed her eyes in focus and managed to walk in a fairly straight line towards us, she stopped and looked at us, her eyes going huge. "Oh, I'm sorry! Am I ruining a moment?" Before either of us could respond, she spun on her heels and covered her ears. "I can't hear you guys anymore! Feel free to kiss!"

Ani glanced at me. "Is she drunk?"

I nodded. "Don't worry, this is normal for her." I sighed and looked at Fall. "Fall, we aren't kissing. You can turn around."

She didn't hear me and Ani gestured for me to go to her. "She can't hear us, we have to get her attention another way."

I sighed and reluctantly let go of the girl in my arms, walking over to Fall, I put my hand on her shoulder. "Fall-"

She grabbed my hand, ducked, and the next thing I knew, I was flat on my back with a bottle pressed to my throat as if it would actually hurt me.

I exhaled and put my hands up. "Well that's new. Where did you learn that?"

She looked at me in confusion and rolled away. "The deepWyld, why?"

Ani pulled me to my feet, whispering as she did so. "Does she usually judo flip people?"

I bit down a chuckle and shook my head. I turned back to Fall. "Just wondering."

She grinned. "So how are you? I'm off to go slay a dragon that's been bothering the Summer court lately." She looked around and took a swig from the bottle. "I have no clue where it is though… a Fafnir I think?" She looked at her now empty bottle and tossed it over her shoulder. "Those are fun, tough hide." Holding up her hand, she gasped. "That's why my gloves are so strong!"

I nodded. "Yeah, I'm sure that's why you wear them."

She looked around. "Have you seen any Fafnirs by any chance?"

Ani and I shook our heads. "No, we haven't seen any, sorry."

She wilted. "Dang. I was hoping you did."

She suddenly whirled around and was pointing a bow out into the undergrowth. She growled. "Annoying knights. Why won't they just go away?"

I blinked. The knights?

She narrowed her eyes and a ice arrow formed on the already pulled back string. "One second, guys. I have to settle the score between us…" She released the arrow in a seemingly random direction and I heard a howl of pain. There were knights out there alright.

She scowled. "And that's what you get for trying to kill MY friends!" She smiled back at us. "I was tracking you, then I realized that they wanted to hurt you, so I've been picking them off ever since."

She dropped the bow and drew her swords. "You guys might want to get ready to fight, we're surrounded." She grinned. "They're weaklings, they haven't even been able to get close enough to hit me."

Ani and I drew our daggers as the knights melted out of the shadows around us. One of them had his helmet knocked off, revealing a rather lengthy gouge across his cheek. He glared daggers at Fall.

"You _stupid_ drunk! We're on your side! We are of the Winter court!"

Fall smiled at them. "I take orders from no monarch."

The knights shifted uneasily at her smile, but they stood their ground.

"Fine, then prepare to die!"

All eight of the knights lunged at the same time, but all she did was laugh. Then at the last second, she wasn't there anymore. I blinked, she didn't clone herself, or even go invisible. She _moved_.

The knights glanced around suspiciously and one of them shrieked and collapsed. We all jerked our attention to the direction of the cry and found Fall standing over him. She wrenched her sword from his chest and flicked it to the side, blood splattered the ground and she grinned at the others. "Who's next?"

Three more lunged at her and she ducked under the first one, jumped the second, and did a backwards sword thrust into the last. He fell in a heap of armor and blood pooled underneath him. Without glancing at the fallen knight twice, she threw herself at the other two, cutting them both down at the same time.

She landed on the ground in a crouch, then stood and looked over her shoulder at the last four. "If all eight of you couldn't hit me, what chance do you think you four have?"

They backed away, gaping at her, but before they could flee, knives were thunking into their armor and they collapsed like a ton of bricks.

We looked back at Fall and I now knew how she got the name Mal. This girl was bad news if she was after you. She sheathed her swords and went to retrieve her knives. After she was done, she skipped over to us grinning happily. "So where are you guys going?"


	19. Note- 2

**Hey everyone! I just wanted to say, I'm still writing the story, it's just that I'm suffering through some writers block… haha I need to give them another problem to agonize through! So if I don't update for awhile, I apologize in advance. _ this might take me awhile...**


	20. He's fine, but he won't be for long

**Hey everyone! I just wanted to say that I have some pretty weird pranks... xD Oh and thanks, I can use some of those ideas.**

**Ani POV~**

I stared at Mal. She had just massacred the entire squad of highly trained Winter knights while drunk out of her wits and now she was acting like she just had a friendly conversation with them.

She wiped the bloody knives on her pants, put them in her pocket, and bent to retrieve her discarded bow. She tossed it in the air and it shimmered before disappearing from sight. Then she looked at us with a smile. "Can I come?"

Puck blinked at her. "Aren't you hunting a dragon?"

She flicked her hand dismissively. "Meh, Lord Pointy Ears can wait awhile. It only ate three or four squads, he has plenty more."

I shot Puck a look and he shrugged, then looked back at Mal.

"I guess you can come, we're heading to Central Park."

She grinned happily. "I know a fun way to get there! Have you ever heard of the Flamewood? There's a trod in there."

Puck and I exchanged glances. "I've never been there." I said. "I guess we can go that way."

Puck nodded thoughtfully. "I think I've been there before…" He grinned at Mal. "This should be interesting."

Mal started turned and started walking. "Well come on, I don't like dawdling around."

We scrambled to keep up with her, she was walking briskly and kept throwing glances around as if she was sensing unseen enemies surrounding us.

Around the tenth time she paused to listen around us, I spoke up. "Are we being followed?" I hoped we weren't, I didn't want to fight anything off.

She narrowed her eyes into the shadows. "No, I'm looking for a good place to set up camp. The flamewoods are about a days trek from here and we have to cross through the darkwolves territory."

I swallowed hard. "Darkwolves? what are those?"

Puck put his arms around me protectively and glanced around wearily. "Fall, are we currently _in_ darkwolf territory?"

Mal looked up slightly and I could have sworn she _tasted _the air. "Not yet," She said, then she sniffed the air like an animal. "We're close though."

I felt Puck's shoulders slump and he exhaled. "Fabulous." The word was almost silent, and I knew that it wasn't directed at anyone. If Puck was nervous, I had the feeling that I should be too.

I repeated my question. "What are darkwolves?"

Puck pulled me to him slightly. "Nasty things. They hunt in packs and tend to look just like an innocent shadow… until your right in front of it and it's trying to chew your face off." He chuckled darkly. "And they have a hideous intelligence…"

I sighed and closed my eyes. "Great…"

We started walking again and finally, Mal stopped. "We're on the edge of their territory, so I suggest you sleep in the trees." She pointed ahead of us. "Don't go that way and you should be fine. I'm going to sleep." She plopped down on the ground and leaned back against a tree.

Puck and I watched her. She wasn't saying anything and she closed her eyes, she must plan on sleeping like that.

Puck pulled me away lightly and we walked to another tree. He glanced at it and a few branches lowered for us. "We should probably get some rest, tomorrow's going to be rough."

After we settled in another tree cradle- courtesy of Puck- I dozed off.

I felt a sharp poke a short time later, rolling over, I muttered 'go away' and snuggled back up to sleep.

Another sharp poke. "Ani! Wake up!" Mal hissed at me. My eyes flashed open and I realized that Puck was gone.

I sat up abruptly and looked at her. "Where's Puck? Is he okay?"

She shushed me and lowered her voice some more. "Yeah, he's fine." A slow grin spread over her face. "But not for long."

I stared at her, was she turning on us? What did she do to him?"

She held up a wad of clothes and I quickly recognized them as Puck's. His only clothes.

I blinked at her grin. "Where did you get those?"

She snickered and tossed them to me. "Our dear friend went off to bath, and he didn't realize that I was tracking him." She paused. "Do you think I should have left the boxers? Should I go and steal them as well?"

I choked on a laugh and lowered my voice. "So what you're saying is that any minute now… a very ticked off half naked Puck is going to come storming over here?"

"Completely naked if he didn't see where I hid his shorts."

I stared at her. _Why didn't I think of that? _

She blinked. "Should I go return these-"

"No!" I lunged and grabbed the clothes from her, stuffing them in my bag, I snickered. "Who would we be if we didn't prank the trickster?"

She caught on and her grin returned. "We should hide this precious cargo."

I nodded. "Oh yes, because we don't want him finding them too quickly, now do we?"

"That would just be _terrible_."

After searching around for awhile, we decided to hang the bag in a spiderweb near the top of the tallest tree we could find. It was in a hole, caught in a web, with a very ticked off spider monster guarding it.

We sat in the tree cradle and I snickered. "Mal, I like the way you think."

She laughed. "Yeah… me too. Do you think that we went a little overboard? We might not be able to get the bag back."

I paused. For some reason, losing my bag didn't bother me much. Especially since that meant Puck lost his clothes. I waved it off and flashed her an evil grin. "I for some reason wouldn't mind that."

She grinned back. "Your _bad. _It's so much fun!"

I crossed my arms and drawled. "Yes I am, and yes it is."


	21. Table turn

**How's this for some AnixPuck moments? It really backfired on him though... xD That's what he gets! btw guys don't flirt with me... what should he do to her at some point? I don't know anything other than what I've read in books. lol**

**Puck POV~**

I turned around and went to grab my clothes but stopped. They weren't where I left them. I whipped my head around and cursed, did something take them _again? _This kind of thing happens to me far too often!

I looked around and found my boxers hooked on a bramble thicket. I ran over and tore them free, glancing around, I narrowed my eyes. Someone was messing with me. I hopped up and down until I got them on, then looked around once more. Someone who didn't want me tromping around completely naked.

I scowled and started marching back to camp. I had the feeling that Ani and Fall would know _exactly _how my boxers got shoved in the thistles… and where I might find the rest of my clothes.

I stepped into the clearing, the girls were nowhere in sight. I sighed and dragged my hand through my hair, where were they?

I climbed up into the tree that I left Ani in and found a note scratched into the bark.

_Puck, we took your clothes. You have to come find us now! Good luck._

_~Ani and Mal_

I frowned and looked around. This was just fabulous, you get two girls together, and within a day, your clothes are stolen from you.

As I jumped to the ground, I heard something hit the ground behind me. I spun around. It was a rock glamoured to look like an emerald. They were nearby…

I looked up and saw Ani up in a tree above me, I caused the branch to lower her to the ground and ran over to her. "Ani! Where's my clothes…-"

When I touched her, I found that nothing was holding her together other that twigs, grass, and a strand of her hair. I blinked, I didn't know that she could do that trick too.

I heard a snicker from above me and saw Fall, she was perched on a branch smiling at me. I stepped closer to her. "Fall, where's my stuff?"

She blinked innocently. "What stuff?"

I sighed. "You know exactly what I'm looking for."

She grinned wickedly. "Yes I do, but I want to hear it from you first."

"Okay," I glowered up at her. "Fall, what did you do with my clothes?"

She smirked down at me evilly. "I gave them to Ani."

I ran my hand through my hair again. This was going to take forever. "And what did Ani do with them?"

"Put them in her bag." She smiled at me and I knew that she left something out.

I looked up at her. "And…?"

She looked at me flabbergasted. "Why would we do anything else to them!?"

I looked at the ground and squinted. I was getting nowhere with this. I blinked. I was shirtless… I'm sure Ani would be much easier to get information out of… I looked back up at her. "And where might Ani be?"

"I'm right behind you Pink Shorts." I felt my face heat, I forgot about that tiny detail… I turned and forced a grin. "Oh, there you are." I glanced her up and down, her bag was nowhere to be seen.

She walked over to me, choking on laughter. "We hid them." Ani crossed her arms and looked me up and down, I could sense that she was a little more than just happy.

I shrugged and turned away, pretending to lose interest in finding her bag. Throwing a glance over my shoulder, I called to them. "I didn't _need_ them anyway, let's get going already."

Fall jumped down from the tree and blinked. "You didn't _need _them? Well if that's the case then you won't care that we couldn't get them back even if we wanted to."

Her and Ani started trailing behind me and I stopped. Turning, I looked at them. "Where are they?"

The two of them got quiet and I knew I was asking the right question. I stepped closer to Ani, her heart beat picked up. "Where are they..?"

Her breath hitched slightly and she stepped back nonchalantly. "I don't feel like telling you at the moment."

I closed the distance between us again and she glanced at Fall in a Dear-God-Please-Help-Me manner. I bit down a smirk, I didn't think this would actually work. I tried again, moving even closer, we were almost touching now- I'd have to say, this was pretty rough for me too. After all, I did only have boxers on.

"Don't you want to tell me where you hid my clothes?"

Her eyes widened for a moment, then she smirked. "Nah, if I tell you, you'll stop trying to get in my personal space."

I stared down at her, this girl was impossible. Then I smiled back at her. "Meaning, you want me there?" I moved so close that we were touching, I could feel her breath on my skin... I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to _not_ grab her and kiss her in the next five seconds.

She bit her lip, refusing to give in. "I'm not saying…"

Fall stepped closer, shoving herself between us, I was relieved and disappointed at the same time. I don't think I could have held out much longer, and I didn't care if I did.

She threw her arms out, putting even more distance between me and Ani. "Okay… You two are apparently both very _very _stubborn. Congrats." She looked at me. "Search the highest tree, if you can kill the spider you might be able to get your clothes back."

I blinked at her. "_What?"_

She blinked at me. "It's up in a tree."

I swallowed. "A spider? Like a giant freaking spider queen… or just a spider?"

Fall waved it off. "More like a spider hag… she's a nasty witch…"

I swallowed again. "Nevermind, I'm fine with boxers. Pink boxers are nice. Let's go." I tried to walk past Ani, but she stepped in my path.

"You're afraid of _spiders_?" She smiled at me while trailing her finger along my chest. "I didn't know that."

I shivered at her touch and glanced at her finger. "Uh… I'm not afraid of spide-" The sentence broke off and I tried again, refusing to admit that spiders freaked me out. "Why would I be afraid of spiders?"

She smiled and continued to stroke me. "I don't know, why not tell me?"

I stared at her, she was turning my own tactics against me. _Well played_.

I shivered again, she was touching my stomach now. "Spiders are stupid, I'm not afraid of the-" The lie wouldn't come, _again. _I glanced at Fall, now would be a great time for her to separate us again...

She was looking up at a bird that was perched in the tree above us. _That's great Fall, keep on helping..._

I looked back at Ani and she leaned in close. I felt my heart trying to pound it's way out of my chest and I swallowed. "Are you going to interrogate me… or kiss me? Make up your mind."

She laughed and kissed me on the cheek. "It's fun to freak you out, now let's go get your clothes back." She stepped around me and I exhaled a breath I wasn't aware I was holding. She could play me like an instrument... and I liked it.


	22. The cute faery guy can hear you

**Ani POV~**

I dropped back for the fifth time and let Puck take point, he glanced at me and slowed down. "What?"

I tried not to obviously check him out and answered the best I could. "We're almost there." This was true, but it wasn't the reason I wanted to be behind him.

"Oh, okay." He continued walking and I stopped to fake tie my shoe- hopefully he didn't notice that they didn't have laces.

Mal stepped past me and snickered knowingly, I glared up at her. "Oh shush you, it's not my fault he's so freaking yummy!" I hissed quietly, Puck was too far away to possibly hear us anyways.

She glanced at him. "Can't blame you there, but really? Tying nonexistent shoelaces? You're wearing _boots_, Ani."

I got to my feet and brushed myself off. "Well, _he_ doesn't know that."

Puck stopped and glanced back at us with an evil little grin. "You do know that the 'yummy' faery boy can hear you two, right? Just wanted to let you know." He then turned around and continued walking without another word.

I blinked. "How good _is _his hearing…?"

"I honestly don't know…"

We continued walking in silence after that… and I tried to be more discreet about staring at pink boxer wearing faery in front of us…. I didn't want to be too obvious, but dear... GOD he was hot!

Mal glanced at me then at Puck and smirked. "Staring."

I blinked in embarrassment and looked at the ground. "No, I'm not."

"Not anymore you aren't."

I sighed. "Okay, fine. I was staring."

She laughed and I saw Puck tilt his head back towards us and his shoulders were shaking slightly. _That jerk is laughing at us! _I gestured towards him and gave Mal a devious look. "His boxers sure are bright, would you call that fluorescent… or neon?"

She narrowed her eyes in understanding. "Neither, I'd call that more of a _bubblegum_ shade of pink."

I glanced at Puck and saw the tips of his pointed ears were almost as red as his crimson hair. _Girls 2, hot faery guy 0._

I smirked and continued conversationally. "I think it matches him rather well, what do you think? Should he wear pink more often?"

Mal laughed and glanced at him. "Oh definitely, I think it suits him well actually… maybe he should get a pink hoodie to match."

I snickered at Puck as he twitched, he didn't like what he was hearing. "I think we should get him one at some point… maybe 'replace' his green one with it."

He stopped and turned to look at us, pretending to be oblivious, he scratched his head. "Where's this tree anyways? I want to get in there, kill the stupid spider, and get out again." He set his shoulders when he said 'spider' and he appeared to force himself not to whimper. He scowled. "And I'm not terrified of spiders." He grinned smugly as he finally found a statement that was the truth. "See? I'm not annoyed by spiders."

I laughed. "Sure, you're not annoyed by them… but that doesn't mean anything, now does it?"

He shrugged and shifted his footing- still refusing to admit it. _He's cute when he's nervous. _

I turned away so I could think- he made it quite hard to focus at the moment. We had to go and find the tree that Mal and I hid my bag in. I crossed my arms and sighed, it was hard enough getting close enough to throw the bag _in_! Nevermind getting it back _out._

"So where is this tree?"

I glanced back at Puck. "Just follow me, I know where it is Pink Shorts." I started walking and him and Mal followed. I could sense his annoyance as he huffed.

"Am I right in the assumption that you plan to call me that until the day I die?"

I laughed at his tone. "Of course, what kind of girlfriend would I be if I didn't?"

He was silent for a moment, then he cleared his throat to break the silence. "So… we're dating?"

I stumbled slightly as it dawned on me what he asked, were we dating? Friends don't kiss each other… or sleep together… or nearly die multiple times for one another. That must mean _something _about our relationship. I thought back to when he thought I actually died, he looked like _he_ was the one dying!

I glanced back at him and I felt my heart flutter- and not just because he was only wearing boxers… I really liked him. "Yeah," I nodded. "I think we're dating, don't you?"

"Yeah… but…" He glanced around. "I don't really care for the rules anyways, but if we're caught-"

"We'll be banished from the Nevernever or worse. I know- and I don't care either." I looked at the ground. "I ran away from my court and title because I didn't want it… I don't care what my mother thinks of this." I smirked and looked at him again. "It's not her business what I'm doing with _my_ life anyways. So she can blame herself for driving me away from that ball and chain she calls court, if she _must_ point fingers."

He grinned. "Well like I said, my king Oberon isn't very happy with me at the moment- I'd might as well put some more fuel on the fire." He laughed and laced his fingers behind his head. "Plus, I already told the healer that we were dating." He glanced at me sheepishly. "So… this whole thing is fine with me- more than fine actually, but for Fall's sake, I won't start spouting poetry."

I swatted at him and he dodged easily while grinning. "What? Did I say something?"

I chuckled. "Oh behave, I think you're still embarrassing Mal." I gestured to the faery girl off to the side of us.

She was making a big show of watching a tree and smirked. "You aren't kissing? Is it safe to look now?"

I rolled my eyes. "We weren't kissing in the first place you can look."

She turned and looked at us, crossing her arms she looked between the two of us. "Look, I don't care if you two are dating or not- court business is just stupid- but I don't want you two getting hurt, so be careful. Okay?"

I nodded. "We'll be careful." I glanced around. "Well, we don't have all day, I want to get halfway through darkwolf territory by nightfall so let's go!"

I started leading us again and we finally came to the tree. It was relatively high and there were webs hanging from it in giant clumped up strands. I threw my arms out at it grandly. "Here it is! The Weepingweb tree that we hid your stuff in."

I looked at the stunningly silent Puck, he was completely blanched and was looking at the tree in a sort of detached manner. I blinked. "Uh… Puck?" He didn't respond, he didn't even flinch as I waved my hand in front of him. "Puck, is anyone home in there?" I slapped his forehead lightly and he nearly jumped out of his skin.

"GIANT VENOMOUS SPIDER QUEEN- I mean… Let's go...! eh..." He laughed awkwardly and I blinked at his random outburst. _Is he traumatized or something?_

He started walking towards the tree stiffly and I glanced at Mal, she shrugged. "He never used to be like that- though I never got the impression that he _liked _spiders either."

I nodded and looked over at Puck who looked like he was pumping himself up to grab a rope sized strand. "Let's go, he's going to need help."

Mal and I started approaching the obviously freaking out faery boy and I heard him muttering something unintelligible under his breath, he was on the brink of passing out I think. He glanced behind himself at us and grinned, though it looked strained. "Come on slow pokes, I don't want to have _all_ the fun up there."

I laughed, and grabbed a strand as thick as my arm. "Well let's go Redhead, try to keep up!"

Mal and I started scaling up the tree and once I got to the lowest branch I glanced back to see Puck heaving himself onto a branch and away from the spider silk rope he had been climbing. He glanced at me. "Meet me at the top, I'm… going to go scout ahead." He then turned into a raven and started flying towards the top.

I giggled, he couldn't handle the webs after all.

I jumped a gap and landed on the next branch from where I had been, then I grabbed the trunk and started pulling myself up the tree.

About halfway up the Weepingweb, I started to notice small unmagical sized spiders crawling along the bark. I flicked one off my hand and sighed, I could see that this tree was still very unpleasant.

I finally pulled myself up to the last branch that would lead to the spider hag's den, I looked around and saw Puck up further, he was clinging to a branch and appeared to be skewering a rather large spider with his clear curved dagger. He glanced down at me. "Feel free to go first, I already took a look at the hag." He shuddered and looked at me wide eyed. "Feel free to go first."

I laughed. "Okay, but let's wait for… Mal." I trailed off as I saw Mal swing limb from limb _into_ the nest _alone_. I glanced at Puck. "Well let's go!" I spun around and swung myself up onto the level that the hollow was at, then without another glance at Puck, I hurled myself into the den.


	23. Note- 3

**Hi guys, sorry, I've been kind of busy lately... [okay, I'll admit, reading manga and watching Sherlock doesn't count as busy...] But I'm back now! I'm on winter break now, so I think I'll be writing more, so I'll try not to neglect this story so much! lol btw Thanks for all the new likes and follows, I feel accomplished! Oh, and I'll probably give them some Darkwolf related problems in the next few chapters- It's been so long that I'd forgotten that detail...- and I like writing PuckxAni moments, so look forward to more of those in the future. Once again, sorry about neglecting this, and once again, thanks for reading!**


	24. What's going on here? Iron?

**And here is the next chapter! lol enjoy! Oh yeah, and I think they just might get him a pink hoodie at some point. ;)**

**Puck POV~**

I watched Ani fling herself into that deathtrap and immediately wished that I'd gone first. She wasn't exactly the strongest fighter I knew, and I don't know what I would do with myself if she got hurt… or worse… she might die. I shook myself to clear my bleak thoughts, I just had to make sure that didn't happen. I swung myself down and onto the branch that connected to the hollow, looking inside at all the webs, I sighed. No turning back now…

I gripped my daggers and clenched my teeth, then I threw myself into the den. Not even five seconds after I was through I was wishing I could leave again. Webs were draped thickly over everything and I could feel the spider silk on my skin. I shuddered and looked around hoping that I wouldn't get caught in any of them- that would really suck.

"Puck! Behind you!" Ani shouted at the top of her lungs.

I spun around just in time to see the demonic arachnid baring down on me. It threw itself off the wall and landed directly in front of me, I jumped back choking on a strangled yelp and raised my daggers. The clear blades glittered viciously and I smirked, why was I so afraid of this thing? It wasn't so big and it wasn't the worse thing that ever wanted to kill me. I shuddered, not even close...

It roared and opened it's strange mouth- it was full of needle like teeth rather than what normal spiders had. It blinked all of it's yellowish green eyes and appeared to smile at me… and not in an endearing way.

I exhaled and tried not to shrink away. "Y-you know. You could really use a breath m-mint." I laughed mockingly and hoped that I didn't sound as terrified as I felt. "Or a better diet, you look kind of chunky there… is sentient being not working for you?"

It snarled and lashed out with a sharp looking leg, I raised my daggers at the last moment and the blades met with a screech. I jumped back and looked at it, it didn't even have a scratch on it.

The spider grinned at me and crossed into an area that was lit up better, it sparkled metallically and I could see that the legs were made of steel. I blinked, why wasn't it in the Iron realm where it was supposed to be?

Before I could attack it, it shot a web at me. The rope glistened with a faint metal threading that was weaved into it and I stood frozen for a moment before Fall came at me full speed and shoved me out of the way. I hit the ground hard and skidded a few feet, looking up I watched Fall.

She dodged the web then spun and lunged at it. I could see that she was swinging a club that she somehow found. She bashed the spider over the head with a loud ringing noise that sounded like a bell being struck with a mallet. The spider crumpled to the floor and lay there dazed.

Ani ran over to me worry clear on her face. She grabbed me under the arms and helped me to my feet. "Are you okay? You're bleeding pretty badly."

I blinked and felt my heart start to calm. "I'm bleeding?"

"Yeah." She looked at me funny. "The webs hit you and cut your leg up pretty badly." She started walking slowly and when I put my foot down to follow her pain shot up my leg. I bit down a yelp and looked at my leg.

"And... the adrenaline has now worn off." Fall's voice said from behind me.

Ani lowered me to the ground and Fall came around from behind me, she was covered in black and grey ichor and now had a long sword in her hand. She flicked her blade to the side, spattering the ground in blood, then she threw the sword up into the air and it disappeared in a shower of ice.

"You okay? You got pretty cut up there." Fall gestured at my leg. "I assume that you can't walk… am I right?"

I narrowed my eyes at the gash on my leg as more blood seeped from it. "Like I said: Spiders are stupid."

Fall sighed and kneeled next to me. She looked at me. "I can heal it, but injuries like this tend to hurt like a mother when I do." She looked me in the eyes. "But if I remember anything about you, it's that you aren't wimpy about pain. Should I go find some herbs?"

I blinked, _that _just sounded fabulous. "Yeah, if you feel like it."

She stood up silently and walked away, leaving me and Ani alone.

"Hey, I got the bag back." Ani tossed the bag to me and I caught it. She sat down next to me and looked down. "I made sure to check it for spiders first, there weren't any in it."

Nodding, I tossed the bag to the side. I looked at her. "What's wrong?"

She shook her head and gestured at my leg. "If we didn't run off with your clothes you wouldn't have gotten hurt."

I blinked. She felt guilty about pranking me. I moved closer to her, careful not to show just _how _much that small action hurt. "It's fine, _I'm _fine. Fall is going to get the herbs and I'm obviously not dying." I chuckled. "Trust me, I've had worse things happen to me- and not on accident. You two weren't trying to hurt me, so it's fine."

She looked at me. "You are way too forgiving, you know that?"

I put my arm around her shoulders and pulled her to me. "I've been called many things, but never 'forgiving'." I chuckled. "Besides, who _doesn't _want to run off with my clothes? Believe me, you aren't the first person to do that to me."

She leaned into me. "Has a guy ever done it to you?"

I paused and thought about the time that I really pissed Ash off and he stranded me in the middle of the frozen wood stark naked… or the time that healer forced him to help wrap one of my injuries and she refused to take my shirt off me… or that other time when he had my hands tied behind my back so I insisted that I had to pee right then and there just to be a general pain in the neck.

I nodded slowly. "A few times, but not for the reasons you may think."

She pulled away and looked at me. "Seriously? A guy?" She smiled deviously. "I'll bet you loved every moment of it."

I chuckled and propped my hands on the ground behind me. "Sorry Ice-girl, but I don't think your brother goes that way, and I certainly don't either."

She blinked at me in complete confusion. "Wait a minute… Ash? Why'd _he_ stripyou?"

I smirked. "Why did _you _strip me?"

She blushed but continued to make eye contact with me. "That's different, you know why _I _did, but why Ash?"

Before I could respond, Fall was swinging back through the tree hole. She hopped across the hollow and landed like a cat next to me. I looked at her, her mouth was full of herbs that she chewed up and she looked sort of like a chipmunk. She tried to speak, then turned and spat the herbs on the floor instead.

I sighed. "That's just fabulous Fall-"

She interrupted me. "It is, I know." She threw a glance at Ani who was currently in my arms and sighed, muttering under her breath something along the lines of 'Leave them alone for any length of time and he ends up holding her.'

Ani wriggled from my grasp and nonchalantly sat beside me. Fall laughed. "It's fine, don't worry about it… but since you two aren't hugging anymore could you go and get a stick? Something big enough so it won't break easily."

Before Ani could agree or even ask _why _ Fall wanted a stick, I threw my head back and sighed thunderously. "Fabulous, let me guess… you need something to jam in my mouth to keep me from hurting myself or yelling too loud."

Fall nodded, "Yes, are you saying that you don't need one?"

I stayed silent and she shrugged and turned back to Ani. "I'm going to take that as a 'yes, I need one.' would you mind getting it for me?"

Ani nodded and glanced at me. She smirked feigning wickedness. "I'll be sure to find a nasty moldy one."

"I'm sure you will." I said dryly, this was not going to be fun if Fall had Ani getting me a stick. Ani left and now it was just me and Fall.

She sat next to me. "Are you okay?" She waved a hand at my gouged up leg. "I'm not sure what's worse, the cuts on your palms or the gash on your leg."

I blinked as it suddenly occurred to me that my leg wasn't the only thing that hurt. Glancing down at my palms, I saw that they were pretty cut up too- or at least I think they were, I couldn't see any wound through the dirt and blood.

I shrugged. "I'm fine, I'm a bloody mess and it hurts like a bitch to move, but other than that I'm fine." I raised a bloody hand and glanced at it. "I've been through much worse… as long as I can't see bone I'm good."

Fall studied me. "We have to find a way to wash the cuts before I put the dressing on them, then we have to wrap them."

I looked at her sharply. "Don't turn into a healer on me, if you do I'll just _have_ to do something to tick you off." I waved a hand and flinched at the newly found pain that flared up from it. "I honestly can't help myself."

She laughed. "I know, Puck. I've actually hung around with you before."

We both fell silent at the reminder that she had faded many years ago.

"So…" She said quietly. "How long was it, eight mortal centuries? Nine? I lose track easily."

"Ten." I blinked at the ground, it's been a long time since I actually let myself think about that. "You've been gone ten centuries."

She stared at me in stunned silence. "You actually remembered…"

"Remembered what?" Ani said as she came through the hole behind me, I turned around and caught a glimpse on a nasty looking branch in her hands that looked like it just wanted to decompose already. I turned back at the sharp pain I felt from moving. "Okay… I won't move."

Ani came around in front of me and Fall eyed the piece of moldy wood evilly. "Ooh! Give it here, I can't wait to stuff it down his throat- I mean put it in his mouth!"

Ani laughed and I gaped at Fall. "What kind of healer are you?!"

"I'm joking! Joking." Ani tossed the stick to the side and pulled a better one out of her pocket, this one was free of unidentified fungus. She walked over to me holding the stick out. "Open wide, Redhead…"

The last thing I managed to say was "What the hell am I?! A stuffed pig?!"


	25. It has some side effects

**Ani POV~**

"No." I said as I stuffed the stick in Puck's mouth. "We don't have a spit to put you on."

He grunted something that sounded suspiciously like "That's just great!" and glowered up at me.

"We don't have a spit, but he could always be pinned to the ground." Mal said from behind me. "Just be careful not to hurt him anymore that he already is."

...And that's how I got into this pretty funny position of sitting on his back while he was snarling in a very non Seelie manner.

I laughed. "Come on, Puck! You sound like a constipated redcap! …and don't ask how I know that."

Mal laughed. "He really does, doesn't he?"

I looked at her, choking on giggles. "Yeah, it's so weird."

He spit the stick out on the floor. "I do not- how the hell can you identify that sound anyway-"

Mal stuck the stick back in his mouth and he snarled again.

I laughed. "Would you be upset with me if I said that you were cute when you're angry?"

He got quiet for an unnatural amount of time and for a second I thought he passed out from lack of oxygen or something. I looked at him- which was hard since I was on top of him. "Puck?"

No response.

I shifted so that my entire weight wasn't on him and within in a second, he heaved me off his back and had me pinned. I looked into his emerald green eyes and he smirked down at me. "Ice-girl, would it be okay with you if you waited until after I'm _not_ bleeding my guts out to do this? I can wrestle in the dirt with you later- OW!"

I looked up to see Mal dragging him off me by the ear. "Don't be vulgar, now get over here and sit still."

She plopped him back on the ground and he pouted. "Let me get this straight… you tell her to sit on top of me while I'm only wearing boxers, then you expect me not to move?" He shook his head and tsked at Mal. "I thought I knew you."

Mal chuckled and absently picked the stick back up. Puck eyed it suspiciously and she grinned. "You know me well enough." Then she stuffed it back in his mouth. "You might was to get more comfortable, this mixture has some… side effects." She smiled weakly. "You're in for quite the interesting night, Puck."

He blinked. "Huh?"

Mal glanced over at the poultice and picked it up. "You'll see." As she turned back to him, she shot a glance at me. "Don't worry, I know what I'm doing."

I swallowed, why would I think otherwise?

I soon figured out why she was reassuring me when Puck chewed the stick in half. He spat the splinters out on the floor and yelled while scrambling away from Mal. Now a good ten arm lengths away from her, he looked at the cuts frenziedly. "What the hell is in this stuff?! _Acid?!" _

Mal moved closer to him slowly. "Puck, I only got your hands, let me see your leg."

He stared at her completely aghast. "No. No way, I refuse to let you near me with that frigging stuff. It burns like iron." He looked at me wildly. "How does _that _happen anyways?"

Mal sighed. "This tree is slightly corrupted. You probably got some iron in the wounds, this medicine heals faster than most, though since it's used for combat healing it amplifies the type of pain you're feeling. Therefore, you are going to feel iron burns since you got cut up by corrupted webs and dirt."

"Fabulous." Puck stared around the hollow and just then I noticed the metal streaking through the bark and webs. We _were_ in a corrupted tree. I looked back at Puck, he was now inspecting his hands again. "If it heals so fast, why does it still hurt like super chilled steel?" He winced as if just thinking about it amplified the pain.

"Like I said: combat healing. It's never fun."

While Puck was still studying his injuries, Mal stepped closer to me. "I need you to distract him… if I don't get this on him, the wounds will worsen." She whispered almost silently. "Could you do that for me?"

I looked at him. He looked like he was in a lot of pain… I've never seen him panic like that over _anything._..

"Ani…"

I nodded. If it would help him, I would do it. Even if he didn't trust me afterwards.

I crept over to him and he glanced at me wearily. I held up my hands. "No medicine, don't worry." I stayed where I was until he appeared to calm down. Once I got closer to him, I could see that he was sweating and that his pupils were dilated.

He stared me down. "No. I refuse to have anymore of that stuff."

I looked at him blankly, hoping that in his current state he wouldn't recognize the look… and wouldn't know that I'm hiding my feelings much like my elder brother used to, he would know right off that I was helping Mal if I showed my emotions. I regarded the now whimpering boy on the ground. I didn't want to do this, but I had to help him… hopefully he'll understand that.

"I'm not sure if the world is spinning from the pain… or the blood loss." He clamped his eyes shut and let me sit down beside him. I put my hand on his shoulder and nearly gasped at how hot his skin was, he was probably delirious from that high of a fever…

"Probably both. We need to wrap those injuries before you pass out." I said, hoping that he _would_ pass out so that he wouldn't remember having the rest of the medicine.

He shook his head. "Hurts, have you ever tried wrapping an iron burn? It really sucks… and this feels more like iron poisoning."

I nodded and edged closer to him, Mal wanted me to distract him, not talk him to death. I glanced at him, unsure if I should be relieved that the bleeding was slowing, or worried. He did just say he was dizzy, he might be beyond the brink of passing out. My heart sped up. What if he died? I wouldn't know what to do with myself, it would be all my fault! I glanced back at Mal, she was sitting about five paces away from us holding the mixture.

I inched closer to the injured fey boy making sure to leave enough room for Mal to get to his leg. "Hey," I looked him in the eyes. "I'm sure you'll be fine." _Once Mal gets to you. _I added silently. "So just relax, okay? I won't let anything bad happen to you." _Mal's tincture isn't bad- its actually really good for you right now… _

He blinked. "I'm not worried- not about my health anyways. I've been through worse…" He exhaled and I felt his muscles tense as if just breathing was starting to hurt. Mal was going to have to act fast.

I leaned in close to his face and his breath hitched. We stayed like that for a moment until he finally asked shakily "Are you going to kiss me? Or torture me?" He grinned, but it seemed weak. "Make up your mind fast Frosty, Fall will be tearing us apart soon."

_Oh, I highly doubt that. _I smiled back at him and leaned in, closing the distance between us. He hugged me closer to him, and even feverish and bloody I wanted him to do that. Though, It didn't take long before Mal lunged in and thickly layered the rest of the herb goop on his leg.

He went rigid as a board and swallowed hardly. Seeming completely torn between continuing to kiss me, or throwing a cursing fit, he pulled back slightly and fidgeted like it was really taking self control to not howl in agony. "O-Ow..."

I blinked. That must have really ruined the moment for him. _Sorry Puck, but It's for your own good… please don't hold it against me._

He clamped his eyes shut and breathed raggedly. "D-Damn… that's even more unpleasant than I imagined I-It would be…" He gritted out. Puck clenched his jaw and I was tempted to back away in case his composure snapped. He doubled over and held up a hand. "D-Dear... GOD! just... give me a second… yeah… ah…" He looked like he was holding his breath for a moment. "This feels like like I just got stabbed with a hot fire poker…"

He stayed like that for what felt like a long time and I cringed. I really hoped he wouldn't be mad at me about this.

He peered up at me from under his hair. "You _are_ good at distracting me… I'll give you that."

I swallowed. "Um… How bad does it hurt?"

He straightened and gritted his teeth against the pain. "Bad…"

I winced. Hopefully he'll be fine by tomorrow…

Mal walked over and stood awkwardly to the side of us. "Sorry about that, Puck. I had to get it on you though…" She glanced at me. "It was my idea to have Ani distract you, so don't hold it against her and…" She paused. "It was also my idea to hide your clothes here."

He glanced at her. "I'm not mad or anything… this just hurts like I was trampled by Ironhorse…"

Mal and I looked at him in confusion and he waved it off. "Nevermind… long story short: not enjoyable."

"Uh… about that…" Mal crouched next to us. "This particular herb combination tends to give the user nightmares… or dreamwalking capabilities… so you're in for an interesting night to say the least."

"Dreamwalking?" Puck threw a fleeting glance in my direction as if he couldn't help himself, then flinched at the sudden motion. "How often does that happen?"

Mal shrugged. "It's a random… but trust me, the nightmares aren't fun." She shuddered. "Not at all…"

I cocked my head to the side. "You've used that ointment on yourself?"

She nodded. "Numerous times over the years, and usually when I had rather bad injuries… it's really not fun… especially when you have to stay silent through it."

Puck blinked. "What have you been _doing _all these years? _Assassination attempts?"_

Mal stared at him unblinkingly and he sighed. "Why do I ask these things..?"

She simply laughed. "You can't resist." Then she glanced around. "We can stay here the night, it seems pretty safe and the corruption isn't too bad."

I nodded in agreement. "Sounds good." I glanced at Puck and he looked relieved that we weren't going anywhere. "Not to mention Puck needs to rest."

He glanced at me. "Oh, don't coddle me princess. I-"

"Have been through worse. I know." I said interrupting him.

Mal laughed and stood up. She glanced around. "We better rest, tomorrow we're going through Darkwolf territory."

I started. "Are we going to be able to travel that soon? Is the poultice that fast acting?"

Mal chuckled darkly. "Yeah, we should be able to travel. Though, he will probably be exhausted and slightly dizzy still."

Puck blinked. "So I'm not light headed from blood loss? The ointment did this to me?"

I looked closer at him and saw that his pupils were still dilated, he must be feeling like crud right now...

Mal turned away. "It will probably do other things too… if your vision turns funny colors don't panic." She walked to the hole and leapt through, disappearing from sight.

Puck broke the silence with a sigh. "I have no clue how I'm going to get my pants on…"

I laughed at the look on his face. He was so serious about his newly found problem!

"What?" His eyes widened. "I'm serious! It hurts to even shift my weight, never mind putting clothes on!" Then he must have realized why that was so funny, because he chuckled. "Man, that sounds ridiculous. I can't get my own pants on."

I nodded. "Oh well…" I said not sounding sad at all. "I guess you'll just have to sleep like that…" I smirked at him. "What a shame…"

He raised an eyebrow at me. "You know, I think my 'vulgarness' is rubbing off on you."

I inched closer to him and rested my head on his shoulder. "Yeah… I think so too."

He laughed slightly. "So, about wrestling in the dirt-"

I swatted at him lightly. "Oh, don't ruin the moment."

"Darn it… Not _that _bad yet." He chuckled and pulled me to his chest. "I'll just have to keep rubbing off on you."

I nodded drowsily. "You'll have to do much more than rub off on me…"

He shook with quiet laughter. "Yeah?"

"Mmm hmm…"

He held me in silence after that and I nodded off.

I blinked and looked around. The place I was in was dark , stunk of iron, and I couldn't recall how I got here. My vision cleared and I could see that I was sitting in a large metal boxlike thing. There were adolescent mortals surrounding me and I glanced out the window beside me. Whatever I was in was moving at moderate speeds and was making me feel sick.

"Ash..? Who's Ash?"

I jerked my head around at the sound of Meghan Chase's voice and saw her across the aisle next to a certain redhead.

He scratched his head. "Oh, no one. Only the prince of the winter court who fell in love with you and took you away from me."

She blinked. "Robby, you make no sense, you know that?"

A pained expression crossed his face. "So I've been told."

I stared at them. Was Puck dreamwalking?

"What's wrong?"

I strained to listen to them.

"Hmm? Nothing, just thinking about things..."

Suddenly the world around me shifted and went black. Puck, still not noticing me, sat on the ground dejectedly and clenched a fist in silence. Then he straightened and looked back at me. He tried for a grin but it wouldn't come. "Thought I sensed a presence other than mine, how you like school buses?"

I walked over to him and sat down, glad to be able to breath again. "That's how it all started… isn't it? The war with the Iron fey?"

Puck nodded slightly. "Yeah, I guess you could say that." He waved a hand towards the nothingness and the image of a little boy clutching a stuffed rabbit appeared.

I blinked at the toddler. "I'm going to assume that this isn't a baby picture of you."

He shook his head. "His name is Ethan Chase. The Iron fey abducted him and I brought Meghan into faery to rescue him." He paused and sighed. "She wouldn't let me stuff the changeling in her oven..."

The little boy disappeared and he stared at the ground. "While we were there, she met your brother up close and personal while Oberon was punishing me for showing Meghan her heritage. Then she ran off with Grimalken and my king sent me to retrieve her…" He glanced at me. "You probably know the story from there."

I nodded and looked around at the musky chamber we were sitting in. "So where are we anyways?" Before Puck could respond, a door above us opened and someone was thrown through and into the chamber.

He smirked. "A dungeon somewhere in the mortal world… I forget which one."

Ther person hit the ground with a startled yelp and looked up at us. She had orangy blonde hair, sky blue eyes and a torn up dress.

Puck nodded at her. "Hi Fall, I'm Puck, this is Ani, and we're going to be here a very long time... so make yourself at home."

The girl blinked up at him in abject terror and backed up. "L-leave me alone… I warn y-you, I can fight."

He sighed and crossed his arms. "If you're scared already, you'll have a heart attack when they interrogate you later." He glanced at me and cringed. "I would wake up soon if I were you."

I looked at him in confusion. "What? Why?"

The door banged open suddenly and a pair of men came stomping down the stairs towards us. "Puck leapt to his feet and winced slightly. I caught his shoulder. "What's wrong?"

He exhaled. "At this point in time, I was tortured by them a few times already…"

I blinked at him, and in the dim lighting I could identify multiple cuts, bruises, and burns along his arms and legs. There was also a rather large bruise on his face as if he were bludgeoned repeatedly.

He placed himself between me and the guards and grinned his trademark grin. "Yes, yes, you came to get the 'demon trickster'. What do you plan to do with me this time? Hang me by my toes from a balcony?"

One of the guards backhanded him off his feet and I let out an infuriated snarl. The two men glanced me up and down and the one who hit Puck scoffed at me.

"Look Marc, the demon has a _mate_."

Marc glanced at his partner. "I don't remember catching this one, maybe the rookies _are_ good for something."

"Bah, I wouldn't go _that _far… maybe one of our women caught her… she looks pretty weak."

I bared my teeth at them. "You wanna test that theory, punk?"

Marc sneered at me. "Oh look, it talks!" He stepped closer and shoved me to the ground forcefully, I bit down a yelp as I found out the hard way that he was wearing iron gauntlets.

"Here, join your mate. I'm sure he'd like it." Then they both turned arrogantly and walked away- probably to find their next victim.

I turned to Puck. "Nice crowd."

Blood trickled from his mouth but he wiped it away. "Aren't they just loveable...?" He paused and stared after them. "You being here is changing what happened to me… when this really happened to me they dragged me away and experimented with the joys of iron shackles."

I swallowed. That did not sound pleasant. "How long were you…"

He smirked. "Until I threatened to burn down their 'pathetic excuse of a dungeon' and kidnap all of their women." He flashed me a devilish smirk. "Worked like a charm."

We both jerked our heads in the direction of a muffled scream.

I stepped towards the sound. "Is that..?"

Puck nodded grimly. "Fall."

We silently made our way to the sounds of struggle and saw Mal… or I guess 'Fall' passed out on the floor with the attackers nowhere in sight. We slowly approached her and found a blood trail leading away from her.

"You have no idea how weird it feels to save your own life." Mal stepped out of the shadows and dropped a bloody tea cup to her feet. "I warned them I could kill them with it."

Before any of us could respond, the dream shifted again. Now it showed the day that Puck and I were jumped by the demons after the Key tried to kill us.

It showed the fight from a third person's perspective. Puck lashed out with his daggers and finished off the last monster. I did the glamour burst and killed my attackers. Then Puck turned to look at me just to see me collapse in a bloody heap…

My breath caught, no wonder he thought I was dead, I was bleeding out.

He sprinted over to me hastily, nearly tripping over his own feet as he did so.

"ANI!"

He threw himself on the ground beside my limp form and checked for a pulse, then pulled back with a bleak look on his face.

"But… but… you can't die on me. You can't!"

He tore at his jacket trying to get it off and once he struggled out of it, tightly tied it around me. At this point he was choking on sobs.

I glanced at him, he obviously was still bothered by this incident since he appeared to be trying to keep calm.

"Um, do you dream in the third person often?" I asked trying to relax the mood of the three of us. I blinked and looked back at the scene unfolding in front of us… I didn't realize that he had gotten that worked up.

Mal coughed awkwardly. "I feel like I'm intruding…"

I nodded slowly without blinking. "Me too, and I'm actually involved."

Puck turned red and shifted his footing. "Feel free to wake up anytime."

Neither me or Mal made any attempts to leave and Puck sighed while dragging his hand through his hair. "That's great guys, keep helping."

Suddenly the area went pitch black and I heard a small choking sound come from Puck. I turned and squinted in his direction but I couldn't see him anymore.

I looked around and saw shadows shifting in the darkness. I followed one of them with my gaze and realized it was a giant spider… that explained the choking sound.

I heard Puck step backwards. "Uh… could you guys wake up? You don't want to see this dream." His voice shook slightly and I knew that he must have had this nightmare often. There was no way he would recognize it that fast if he didn't.

I reached out and grabbed his hand. "I'm not going anywhere."

He sighed and I felt him shake his head. "You'll never look at my mental state the same way again…"

I stepped closer to him, ignoring the spiders that were now surrounding us. "Why are you afraid of spiders anyways? It seems almost like it's trauma rather than fear."

He was silent for a moment and I felt him stiffen. "Can I tell you when we wake up?"

"I don't see why not."

"Okay. And just to let you know, one of them is looking at me funny…"

I looked around, they were all looking at us funny.

Puck stood rock still muttering under his breath. "The next nightmare sounds great right about now…"

Suddenly, all the spiders lunged forward and the last thing I heard before jerking awake was Puck's very unmanly high pitched squeal.

I looked around quickly and before I could make any move to sit up, Puck jerked into a sitting position with a hard exhale. I felt his heart hammering against his ribs and looked at him. "I think we died."

He nodded mutely and I followed his gaze. Mal was still sound asleep.

I blinked. "She's _fighting _them?"

Puck laughed, though I knew it was just a cover since I could still feel how stiff he was. "What else do you expect from her?"

"Nothing else… I guess." I turned in his arms to look at him, he looked exhausted. "How many times _did_ you wake up?"

"I lost count…" His shoulders sagged. "I guess the last time I fell asleep I was dreamwalking _and_ having nightmares."

Mal jerked directly to her feet shaking her fists, screaming "DIE!" then she blinked. "I win!"

Puck and I stared at her in stunned silence, then busted out laughing. She wrinkled her forehead at us. "What? What's so funny?"

I sobered a bit. "N-nothing." I managed to say between giggles. "It's just that you woke up shouting your head off for something to die!"

She cocked her head to the side like a confused cat. "Don't you?"

"No, I don't." I sputtered out. That was just too well timed.

Puck looked at her. "Ice-boy never even did that! And he solves all his problems through homicide!"

Mal plopped on the ground criss crossed and pouted indignantly. "Well I was killing things. What do you expect?"


	26. Note-4

**Hey everyone! I'm currently working on the next chapter but it might be awhile since I'm suffering through "This part has so much potential, but I sure as heck can't find it!" and so I'm just letting you know that I am still here. **

**lol I was also looking through other Iron Fey fanfics and saw at least two other stories with "Puck's Story" for a title. Do you think I should change the name? I'm open to ideas since I can literally agonize over names for hours on end. [I don't know how I'm ever gonna name my future kids... lol] Don't hold any ideas back! I NEED this help. Hahaha  
**


	27. Wolves and Surprises

I stared at Fall. I would be worried about her… but it was my dream.

She looked around and stretched. "Well, once I'm up, I'm up, let's go." She briskly walked towards the exit and Ani and I broke apart and scrambled to our feet. I started after her, and stumbled at a sudden wave of dizziness. Ani caught me by the shoulder and steadied me much like she had in the dream.

"You okay?" She looked at me worriedly. "Don't push yourself, are you in pain still?"

I paused, there was still a dull throbbing, but that was it.

She grinned slightly and made a show of looking me up and down. "Not to mention, you might want to get dressed."

I blinked as it dawned on me that I was still only in my embarrassingly pink boxers. Quickly regaining myself, I nonchalantly laced my fingers behind my head, ignoring another wave of dizziness that hit me. "What? Ice-girl, are you actually saying that you want me to get dressed?"

She laughed. "Yes, now will you do it yourself? Or should I get Mal to help you?"

She went and picked my clothes up, then threw them at me.

I caught them before they hit my face, then laughed. "Volunteering Fall are you? I don't think she'll appreciate that."

"I'm sure she won't. Now put your pants on at least." Ani smirked. "Unless you want me to continue to call you Pink-shorts."

I scowled and she laughed. "What? It's not like you don't call me by nicknames."

"Ice-girl is different."

"Not really… besides, I also call you Red-head." She grinned at me in a very me-like manner and I couldn't help but smile back.

Fall poked her head back in the tree hollow and huffed. "Hurry up, the wolves are even worse when they sense weakness and by the time we get there we'll be tired again."

Ani and I nodded and I put my clothes on rushiedly, I honestly was surprised that I wasn't even scarred from the day before.

Fall grinned at me. "Come on, I'll lead!" She darted out of sight and Ani and I rushed after her.

Let's just say, when Fall was excited she was as difficult to keep track of as Grimalken was. She darted around a thick trunked tree, and when we followed her, she was gone. Then she appeared up in the tree telling us to use all our senses and not just our ears and eyes.

Ani huffed around the fifth time she said that. "What other senses can we use? Taste?"

I laughed. "I'm pretty sure I saw her sniffing the air before."

Fall called for us to hurry up and we started out again, briskly keeping pace with her once we saw her again.

We continued like this until Fall abruptly stopped. "We're here, be careful here on out."

I glanced around, wearily stepping towards Ani as I did. "Do you have any tips to keep us alive?"

She chuckled darkly. "Someone once told me that darkwolves are attracted to fear, and will kill anything that runs from them." She glanced back at us. "So stick close to me and don't run away from shadows."

Ani stepped closer to her and she grinned. "We aren't in danger yet, calm down."

For some reason, the way she said that made me even more unsettled.

She started walking again and I straightened. I was Robin Goodfellow, and I have faced things much worse than darkwolves!

Ani paused and looked at me. "I'm not sure if that flare of resolve around you is good or bad…"

I reached for her hand and gently led her after Fall. "Most likely a little of both."

She laughed and let me lead her away.

After walking for what felt like a short time, we came to an area that was distinctly different from the other areas we had passed. There were patches of briars scattered around, tall pine trees blocking out the sky, and nooks and crevices that held shadows and unseen enemies within. As I walked, the terrain under my feet swished and squashed with murky water.

"Reminds me of Fogpod…" Ani's voice came a little while later. "It's just that gross."

I laughed, the ground did seem like a giant Fogpod was cracked over it. I nodded. "Yeah, it really does."

Ani glanced around. "It makes me wonder what that healer ever did to clean up her house."

"I sure did wreck it." I chuckled at the memory. "It's her own fault, if she didn't bring the guards to us, I wouldn't have had to do that, now would I?"

"Nope." We followed after Fall in silence until one of the shadows at my feet moved. My heart sped and I moved Ani to my other side as nonchalantly as I could. She glanced at me. "Something wrong?"

I grinned hoping that she wouldn't pick up on my unease. "What? I have to be unpredictable, otherwise people will worry."

She stared at me as I stepped over another shadow, then narrowed her eyes. "I see them too you know." As she said this, she deftly stepped over a shadow that moved into her path. "So don't worry about scaring me." She snickered. "Growing up in the Winter court tends to lead to some lack of fears." She looked down at one of the shadows that tried to coil itself up her leg. "They're kind of annoying."

"Yeah. But not for long." Fall's voice said from up ahead. She was staring around us intently and I realized that we were surrounded.

"By the way, there's hedgewolves too."

I stepped closer to Ani and surveyed the situation. If it were just the two of us, I would be worried, but Fall was here too… that evened out the odds somewhat.

The hedgewolves were starting to unfurl and the the darkwolves were becoming solid around us.

One of the darkwolves that was currently three dimensional lunged at us and I jumped in front of Ani. I met in in mid air and slashed at it viciously with my daggers. It yelped and fell to the ground limply as I turned and scooped some twigs up into my hand. I smirked at the others and tossed the debris into the air. Three look-a-likes appeared beside me, all grinning much like I was. "This seems a bit more even. Whaddya say?"

One of the hedgewolves growled in response and lunged at one of my doppelgangers. Daggers and teeth flashed, there was a spray of blood, a high pitched yelp, and the wolf collapsed and turned into a thistle bush. I smirked, this was going to be childs play.

I quickly rolled to the side and lashed out at another soon to be victim, it leapt out of my range and quickly lunged back in, pinning me to the ground. I grabbed its neck and struggled to hold it away from me as it snapped its foaming drool dripping jaws at me. I smirked as I remembered another day, with a similar situation as this, then I tightened my hold on it. "By the way, your species still needs breath mints." And I summoned my glamour to me, causing vines to start growing out of the hedgewolf's mouth, muzzling it.

It whined a bit, and scampered away clawing at the vines that were now holding it's jaw shut.

I jumped to my feet and stabbed an incoming darkwolf as it tried to take me by surprise. My dagger plunged into it's side and it screeched in a very human like manner. I wrenched myself free from it and spun on my next target before it even hit the ground.

As I looked around, I found multiple bramble patches, quite a few ice sculptures that looked as though they were suffocating, and still a healthy number of living wolves. I ducked under one as it sprung out of nowhere at me, then I quickly ended it's life without another thought about it.

Ani was on the other side of the clearing where I had left her. She was fighting fairly well, doing glamour focused attacks rather than using her daggers. I worked my way over to her, ducking under a limp form of a darkwolf as Fall hurled it at an onslaught of foes.

There goes Fall, using dead corpses as weapons.

I pressed myself up behind Ani and she glanced back at me. "They ate the dopplegangers."

I laughed as I saw the mutilated sticks strewn across the ground. "Well, I'll just have to avenge them, won't I?"

She froze another darkwolf and smashed it with the butt of her dagger, causing the ice to shatter into thousands of shards, dropping the now limp form to the ground. It dissolved into shadows and faded away. "Yeah, but there's so many of them!" She continued to do this to her attackers until she had a pile of dagger sized icicles at her feet.

I grabbed her arm and pulled her away from them, causing the wolves to slowly advance on us and into the pile of very sharp ice.

"Puck! What are you-" She broke off her protest as I conjured up a tornado and released it on the wolves. Darkwolves and hedgewolves alike shrieked in pain as the ice shards tore them apart.

Ani gaped at the chaos I just caused. "...Damn. Since when could you do that?"

"Long story."

I pulled her to the side and slashed at another darkwolf as it came at us, then a moment later she was shoving me down to get a better shot at some more wolves. She threw out her hand and a spray of ice daggers flew at them; the startled yelps rang out.

She pulled me back to my feet. "Sorry about that."

I glanced behind me at three new bushes. "No problem."

There was a burst of winter glamour from across the clearing and I immediately started shivering. I looked over and saw that Fall just froze half the glade, including it's inhabitants. At least ten wolves stood frozen solid and I swallowed. I've been on the receiving end of weaker versions of that attack before… and it was never fun.

All of the wolves started to crack and break around her and the blood soaked Fall glared at the others.

"Make. My. Day."

I would have to say, she looked down right scary right now.

The wolves started to back off, but apparently not fast enough because Fall hurled her hand out at them, skewering them with ice daggers.

"Annoying mutts… goes and gets me all bloody."

I nodded vaguely, now that the adrenaline was wearing off, I felt like I was about to be sick.

Ani jogged over to Fall and I clamped my eyes shut to try and stop the world from spinning. "I'm sure you aren't beyond help."

I heard Fall say something back, but I was too busy trying not to vomit to actually care at this point. I slumped and sat on the marshy ground, leaning on a tree. I breathed in and out deeply, trying to get rid of the feeling of having too much to drink, then sitting in a New York city cab- both feeling awful enough on their own.

The girls kept bantering, then I heard my name, after a short silence they both ran over to me.

There was a sigh. "Help me get him out of here, he might be like this for a while."

"What's wrong? He was fine a second ago..."

"The medicine from earlier, it has the nasty habit of making the person dizzy and sick."

The response was garbled and I felt myself being moved. I clamped my jaw, refusing to puke on Ani and Fall.

I woke up shivering, I was still somewhat light headed and when I sat up everything spun violently. I flopped back down, suddenly very aware of why I was so cold. I jerked back into a sitting position, I was shirtless, and flopped on a cave floor. A cold cave floor. A wet cave floor.

"Good to see you're up." Mal said as she tossed my shirt to me. "I didn't want to risk you being sick on it, so I took it off you." She blushed. "Ani didn't know what to make of my actions."

I quickly put it back on, then scowled at how cold I still was. "Why is it so wet in here?"

"Cold damp caves aren't your style?" Fall grinned at me. "I couldn't get you up a tree, sorry."

I looked around and scratched my head. "Where's Ani?"

"How did I know you were going to ask that?" She grinned and pointed towards the cave entrance. "She knows how to hunt you know. I lended her a bow."

I blinked and looked back at Fall. "She can hunt? When I first found her she was fleeing in terror from a basilisk that she took eggs from."

"I didn't have a bow then." Ani's voice said from behind me. She strolled over to us and dropped a few bright blue squirrels on the ground. "You were the first person to train me with daggers."

I glanced at the squirrels, my stomach now calling to me. "So you ran away with nothing but daggers?"

"I needed to be able to hide what I took. A bow isn't very discreet." She turned away and I nodded while looking around for firewood.

"Makes sense." I spotted some on the far end of the cave and quickly scrambled to my feet to go retrieve it. Once I brought the bundle back, I piled it up like a teepee and willed it to catch on fire. now having a healthy fire going, I skinned the rabbits and put them on a few extra sticks shishkabob style.

holding them over the fire, I turned back to Ani. "You know." I said jokingly. "I feel like this is flipped, shouldn't I be the one hunting and you two be cooking?"

Fall bursted out with laughter, nearly making me drop the sticks into the fire. "Puck," She sputtered between giggles. "I can't even boil water. Why would I be able to cook any better?"

Ani looked at Fall. "Even I can boil water, well… kind of." She glanced at me. "If you want, I can scorch the squirrels for you."

"Scorch…?"

"Yes, scorch."

Conversation went like that for awhile, then I passed out the squirrels. I bit into mine, then realized how long it's been since I actually ate anything. Apples aside, I haven't eaten anything since I met Ani. I wolfed the squirrel down, not even bothering to chew the first three bites.

Once I finished it off, I glanced up and saw Ani and Fall staring at me, half eaten squirrels in hand.

I shrugged. "I don't know about you, but I haven't eaten in about…" I paused, I ate the day before I ran into Ani… whenever that was. "Time is tricky here, nevermind."

The girls laughed. "That long ago? No wonder you mutilated your food." Ani said with a grin. "You don't eat like that in court, do you?"

Before I could respond, something came sprinting full speed through the cave entrance as if it was being chased by a mob of trolls, then they jumped on Fall's back, she reflexively grabbed the boy under the arms and flipped him over her shoulder, throwing him head over heels. The boy hit the ground with an audible "huf!" as the air was knocked from his lungs and he laid there with a grin. "Miss me?"

Fall stared at him for a second, then a slow grin spread itself over her face. "Mav!" She flung herself at him and shoved him back to the ground as he tried to sit up. "I wasn't sure if you'd find me!"

I blinked at the two of them and exchanged a look with Ani, she shrugged in confusion.

The boy who was apparently named Mav didn't fight back as Fall shifted so her entire weight was on him.

"Questioning my tracking skills now? I thought we've been through this." He lowered his voice. "I'm just as good as you are."

Fall grinned at him. "Says the one who's pinned."

No sooner that the words were out of her mouth, he surged upwards and threw her off him. He rolled onto her and propped himself up over her. Now, he was pinning her.

He grinned down at her. "Look who's talking, now."

She relaxed under his touch and grinned. "I'm not pinned, I'm right where I want to be."

He chuckled. "Why didn't I think of that one?" He rolled off her and perched on the ground in front of her, giving her space to sit up. As she did, he pulled a pair of brass knuckles from his pocket and slipped them on as if through habit.

I blinked, unsure if I should attack this guy or leave him to Fall. He didn't seem like he was going to hurt her, but he probably could if he wanted to since he managed to jump her just now. I looked at him, he had short brown hair, a black t-shirt, and grey cargo pants with chains that I assumed were made of silver attached.

Fall studied him and he smirked. "I'm not wearing battle armor at the moment, do I pass?"

She nodded thoughtfully, then smirked evilly. "I'd have to say Mav, the boots made you taller."

"That's all I get?" He pouted at her. "And here I was thinking that you'd be happy to see me." He looked away pretending to be hurt. "O-kay... I guess I'll just be leaving then."

Fall laughed and flicked her hands at him in a shooing motion. "That's right you. Go on, GET!" She pointed towards the exit and at this point was choking on giggles. "Don't let the door hit you in the butt on the way out."

Mav laughed and took this as invitation to move closer to her. He pulled her to his chest. "I'll leave if you come with me… I don't have a mission at the moment."

Fall seemed to think on that for a minute, then glanced at Ani, and I. "Sorry Mav, I'm busy right now…" She glanced back at him. "Are you planning on being back in the field soon?"

Before he could respond, Ani stood, stepped over to Fall, and pulled her away from him. They made their way to the other end of the cave, then appeared to be talking in hushed voices.

I turned and looked back at Mav, he looked just as confused as I felt. He glanced back at the girls. "Should I be worried?"

I waved the question off. "Only if you want to be."


	28. I think they like each other!

**Okay, first of all, lol Ani was saying that she couldn't cook for crud, and that she would most likely find a way to scorch the food lol. Also, yes. Yes Mal is xD. Lol, and I figured you were a girl, so that's not really a surprise for me! And Mav is pretty interesting, I've been thinking about adding him in for awhile now... Muahahahaha... Evil thoughts, thinking very evil thoughts! As for the title of the story, I think I might just keep this for now.**

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**Okay~ I wrote that top part a few days ago, so I'm gonna add to it. I couldn't resist! I needed Mal to be busy in order to do this part, so enjoy. ;)**

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Ani POV~

"That guy's not your brother." I crossed my arms and stared Mal down as she struggled to respond.

We were now on the opposite side of the cave from the boys, and I was trying to figure out exactly who Mav was. I looked up and saw that the boys were watching us in confusion, and that Mav looked slightly worried.

"How do you know?" She said quickly while rubbing her hands on her pants in a very uncharacteristic fashion, almost nervous. "He looks like me." She stared at me as if willing me to drop the subject.

I glanced back at the boys. Yes, he did look like her. Just like her. The only differences I could find were eye color, hair length, and gender. Maverick, as Mal called him, even dressed somewhat like her with his grey cargo shorts and black t-shirt.

I kicked a rock on the ground and huffed. "Fine, he does look like you… but he's not your brother, it's dead obvious Mal."

She scowled and looked at him from over my shoulder. "Would you believe he's my cousin?"

"No." I deadpanned, then I watched her, trying to keep from grinning. "Mal, is he, or is he not your boyfriend?"

She flinched and looked down at the ground. "He's my friend who is a boy..."

I smiled disarmingly, this conversation felt like pulling teeth, she just wouldn't give in.

"Alright, but I have to say… he's pretty cute." I pretended to glance at them from over my shoulder fleetingly, then back at Mal. "What do you think?"

Mal watched me wearily. "I guess so, what about it?" There was a slight defensive undertone to her words and I continued.

"Maybe we should invite him to come with us, he seems to want to spend time with you anyways." I grinned, hoping that my next statement would set her off. "I wonder what color his shorts are."

She bristled for a second but bit her tongue. "I don't know, why don't you go ask?"

Dang, it didn't work!

I studied her, this was my last resort…

"Alright, come on!" I spun around and started making a beeline for Maverick, only to have my arm caught by a squeaking Mal.

She lunged forward catching me before I even got five steps. "Don't actually do it!" She hissed on the brink of panic. "He'll think I set you up to it!"

I smiled sweetly at her, it was working. "If you two aren't dating…" I started innocently. "Then it won't matter anyways."

She groaned and dropped her arm. "Fine, we're dating… and if you really want to know, he wears blue ones." She blushed heavily and looked at her feet once again. "Don't ask how I know that."

Did she seriously just…? She actually told me that what color his boxers were.

I laughed teasingly. "That's just wonderful Mal. I really needed to know that."

She shrugged in defeat and continued to look at her feet. "I don't need you asking him awkward questions that I can easily answer without him knowing..."

I glanced back at the boys, they were talking about something, and I could tell from Maverick's horrified expression that whatever it was, it wasn't good.

I looked back at Mal and raised an eyebrow. "Should we invite him along? I think he'll like it once he gets used to Puck."

Mal looked into my eyes worriedly. "You're okay with that?" She shifted her footing on the damp rocky ground and continued to wipe her palms on her shorts. "You barely even know the guy."

I shrugged. "Puck seems okay with him." I gestured over at the now laughing redhead, Mav was currently shouting something at him and whatever it was, Puck seemed to find it quite amusing. "You might want to decide fast so we can go and break that up, by the way."

Mal smiled as she watched the boys bicker. "Don't worry, Mav won't get hurt." She glanced at me. "And Puck's extraordinarily hard to kill, if your brother couldn't ever accomplish it, I doubt my... boyfriend, will in the next few minutes." She paused when she said 'boyfriend' as if she wasn't used to calling Maverick that.

I nodded thoughtfully as I watched them, then Mal grinned at me and squinted. "I think they like each other."

As she said that, Mav took a swing at Puck and the trickster dodged out of the way easily, throwing his head back and laughing with sheer glee.

"You think so?" I threw a sharp glance in Mal's direction and she grinned.

"Definitely."

We made our way back to the boys and I saw Puck facing away from Mav with a wicked glint in his eyes while Maverick was glaring daggers at his back as if willing him to spontaneously combust. Mal jogged past me and over to Mav. "Mav!"

He turned away from Puck, his gaze softening as he focused on Mal. "Yeah?"

"We've voted, and majority says that you can come with us!" She declared while grinning at him.

He nodded slowly and glanced suspiciously at Puck- I didn't know what was said while we were gone, but it couldn't be good.

"Don't worry." I added quickly before he could argue. "I'll keep Puck under control." I stepped closer to Puck and shot him a behave-right-now-or-else look, the redhead simply laughed and 'nonchalantly' put his arm around me… obviously a silent warning directed at Mav.

I sighed silently. Note to self, explain to Puck that Mav is dating Mal.

Mav stared at me and Puck, his eyes widening for a second before he responded, pretending that Puck's silent and very misguided warning flew clear over his head. "How the heck do you plan to do that?" He laughed awkwardly and threw Puck a look. "The king can't even accomplish that, so if you know the secret, please tell everyone you know!"

Puck looked at me with a grin. "He knew who I was."

"I gathered."

Mal grinned at Mav as she stepped in front of him. "So, will you come? I'll feel guilty if you don't..." She pouted and he rolled his eyes while smiling.

"I guess so."

"Alright then." I said, relaxing into Puck's arms. "We now, are a group of four!"

"Yes!" Mal grinned, then nonchalantly looped her arm through Maverick's while grinning at me. "Can we go scout ahead?"

I laughed and shot her a look, causing her to blush and scowl at me at the same time.

I waved them off. "I don't see why not," I glanced at Puck, remembering how he wolfed down the squirrel earlier. "While you're out, could you two catch some more food? We need to keep our energy up."

Mal and I shot Puck a pointed look, and his stomach growled in response. He shifted his weight awkwardly. "What? I've been distracted…" His voice trailed off and he fell silent. Thinking about something..?

Mav broke Puck's uncharacteristic silence. "No problem." He laughed and stretched his arms up above his head. "Pretty sure I haven't eaten in three days."

Mal gaped at him, eyes wide. "Maverick, you're going to make yourself pass out from hunger or something!" She started to tow him away. "First thing I find, will be stuffed down your throat!"

He laughed and allowed himself to be dragged. "At least cook it first."

Then they disappeared through the cave exit, leaving me and Puck alone.

I spun in his arms and laced my fingers around the back of his head. "Pretty sure that move was so nonchalant that only everyone present noticed." I grinned and kissed him on the cheek. "Don't worry, I like _you_."

He laughed. "I thought only he noticed, you did too?" His eyes glinted mischieviously and he glanced in the direction that the happy couple left in. "Not her brother," He looked at me in confusion, then continued. "I hope."

I nodded and laughed. "She tried to convince me that he was, but no… they're dating."

He grinned ear to ear, obviously not just happy for Mal. "Well that's good, did she say anything else?"

I smirked at the trickster in my arms. "His boxers are blue."

I said the statement quickly and he blinked his emerald green eyes at me in visible perplex. "_What_?"

I pulled him closer and smiled. "Nevermind."

He continued to watch me, then smirked. "So, how likely do you think it is that Fall will stuff a dead animal down Mav's gullet?"

I blinked and laughed, that was the last thing I'd expected him to say just now. "Way to ruin a moment!"

All he did was grin slightly, not his usual wicked grin, but the sweet one that he rarely shows to others. "Felt more like an awkward silence to me. Was it a 'moment'?"

I swatted him lightly and leaned into him pouting. "Yes. Yes it was."

"Okay…" Puck pulled me closer to him gently. "If it's alright with you, let's just continue the 'moment'."

I let myself be pulled to his chest, then looked up into his deep emerald green eyes, he was watching me contently. I smirked a bit, I _had_ to tease him some. "I didn't know one could just continue a 'moment'. Who gave you that power?"

He leaned in close, his breath tickling my ear as he spoke. "I did." His voice was just above a murmur and I stared at him and blushed. "Damn, since when could you be so romantic?" Before he could respond, I pressed my finger to his lips. "Don't. That'll just _really_ ruin the moment." He just chuckled and nodded as I pressed myself closer to him.

After a moment, I pulled back slightly and looked up at him, we were so close that I could hear his pulse… and we were alone. In a secluded cave. _Alone._

He stayed frozen where he was, obviously thinking something very similar to what I'd just realized. He watched me intently, not pulling back or moving closer, just waiting. I leaned up into him and wrapped my arms around his neck and he hugged me back tightly. "You know..." He murmured quietly in my ear. "If we're like this much longer, Fall will miraculously come back, then rip us apart while accusing me of being vulgar."

I laughed and tightened my grip on him. "She'll have to pry me off you kicking and screaming." I looked up into his emerald green eyes. "I may not be good in a fight, but I can be a royal pain in the neck."

He chuckled deliciously. "You couldn't have done that any of the other times?" He gave me a doe-eyed look of innocence. "Fall would have given in."

"Of course not." I said with a grin. "All the other times you were being vulgar." I flicked him in the forehead and laughed softly. "But in an attractive way."

He grinned back. "What can I say? It happens naturally."

"The vulgarness or the attractiveness?"

The redhead laughed and I felt it reverberate throughout his body. "Both, I think."

I smiled deviously and dropped to the ground, pulling him down with me uncaring of the damp rocks that were now soaking through my pants. "I knew it."

He chuckled and he propped himself up over me. "Suddenly a cold damp cave doesn't seem so bad." Grinning his trademark grin, he added. "and maybe if we did start freaking out, Fall wouldn't be able to get us away from each other."

I laughed at the mental image of Mal trying to pry me from Puck while I was shrieking my head off, I think it would work! "Yeah, because we would want to put her and Mav through that." I leaned forward closer to the brilliantly green eyed Summer boy in front of me. "They'd have nightmares for the rest of their existences."

He laughed as he gazed at me. "Are you really all that scary-"

I cut him off when I closed the space between us and kissed him. The force behind me leaning into him caused him to lean back- losing his balance momentarily- but he immediately caught himself, fell silent, and closed his eyes. Kissing me back. We stayed like that for a time… me leaning forward, him perching in front of me.

Then I looped my arms around his neck and pressed myself closer to him, I wanted to kiss him until we were both breathless, then some more. He paused for a second as if wondering how this started, then wrapped his arms around me, pulling me to him tightly. I let him clutch me to his body, feeling the rapid beating of his heart through his shirt. Then I leaned up into him. He was hugging me pretty hard, but I didn't care, all I wanted was for him to not stop holding me.

A small sound escaped him and I laughed against his lips. "Need air?"

"No." He chuckled. "I would be fine with suffocating right about now…" He pulled me on top of him as he lay down on the ground. I stared into his gorgeous green eyes breathlessly, it occurred to me for the first time that they were like a trap. They pulled you in, then begrudgingly released your gaze again if you really struggled to look away… which I wasn't attempting to do anyways.

He stared up at me, then smiled. "You've got pretty eyes too you know."

I smiled back, unable to help myself. "What's so great about tree green?"

"Evergreen, actually. And everything. It makes you special since most Winters have boring green eyes." He paused. "Yours have to be special, because I find them very attractive."

At this, I felt myself blush. "Your eyes are nice too, I'm surprised you don't have a fanclub of adolescent mortal girls worshipping you."

"Why would I?" He smirked. "Not like I wouldn't want one, but I don't see how I could start a cult for looking good."

"If you had one, it would be because I started it…" I continued to blush. "Because I'd want to be president of it."

"You like little old me that much?" He smiled warmly at me and I stared at him.

"I demand the fifth." I felt all the blood in my body rush to my face and I choked on a giggle. "You'll never make me talk."

Puck studied me, then grinned evilly. "I'll get you to."

"Is that a threat?"

"Nah, I only threaten people I dislike, think of it more as…" He paused mid thought, then laughed. "A newly found motivation."

It was my turn to poke fun at him now, I smirked. "What? No promises? Are you afraid that you won't accomplish it and that you'll fade?"

"Me? Scared?" He scoffed. "No way, I just avoid promises." He smiled slightly. "Something you learn with age."


	29. Revenge is a dish best served furry

**Hi guys! Thanks for all the reviews so far [I feel so loved!] and I just wanted to warn you that this chapter will be short... but don't worry, I tried to make it make up for it's length in humor! lol and yes, the fangirling did tip me off [heck, even I fangirl when I reread this stuff...] soooo, yeah. Enjoy ;)**

Puck POV~

I continued to stare into her eyes and she blushed more and more. I had to say, her eye color was rather out of the norm for Winter fey. Usually they had Icy green or blue… or even silver when you think about Ash, so her Evergreen was pretty special, though it is a tree that only grows in the Winter territories... So I guess it makes sense.

I was startled out of my thoughts by a loud sound outside the cave. Something was struggling.

I glanced at Ani, then rolled off her to go investigate. I helped her to her feet, but before we got ten steps, Maverick jumped through the entrance of our cave looking around madly before darting to the other end of the cavern and scaling the wall up to the ceiling.

He clung to the ceiling and mouthed "Don't say anything." at us. Within seconds, Fall came bursting in as well, she was holding a squirrel in one hand, and a knife in the other. She glanced around for Mav, then narrowed her eyes. "I know you're in here… prey always return to known grounds…" She grinned and it looked pretty psychotic given the fact that she was clutching a knife in one hand, and a dead animal in the other…

She sniffed the air and squinted. "Not to mention, I can smell you from a mile away."

I glanced back up at Mav's hiding place, but he was gone.

"Should I be worried about that?" He stepped out of the shadows in the back of the cave and grinned. "That you actually know that you can smell me from a mile away?"

Fall blushed at this. "What? don't even try to convince me that you never tracked me like that before."

"Tracking me now are you?" Mav laughed and nodded at the squirrel. "And I still refuse to eat that until someone cooks it… or skins it at least-"

I blinked, somehow during the time it took for him to finish that statement, Fall crossed the cave and tackled him to the ground. She used her knees to pin his arms and sat on his stomach. Grinning she held up the squirrel. "Open wide Maverick…"

He gasped for air, but clamped his mouth shut before she could stuff it down his throat. He shook his head and was obviously trying to regain his breath that she knocked from his lungs without opening his mouth.

She studied him as if sizing him up, then a slow grin spread itself over her face. She shifted so her full weight was on him. "Hey… are you still ticklish..?"

His eyes widened, but he stayed silent, I wasn't sure if it was an attempt at dodging the question, or if he was still refusing to open his mouth

She sighed over dramatically. "Oh well… I guess I'll just have to find out…" She shifted her hands to his sides and he twitched- he was obviously ticklish. She smirked down at him. "Oooh lookee here, I think I found a new spot!"

He shook his head and struggled to get away and Ani and I watched in a sympathetic fascination, it didn't occur to me that he could be that sensitive.

Ani tugged on my jacket. "Should we help him?" She glanced at Fall who had the poor guy thoroughly pinned. "I'm just not sure if we'd be much help…"

I shook my head. "Nah, if he can't get away… he's beyond our help."

We continued to watch as Fall tickled him to the point of tearing up, he appeared to be choking down his laughter. Fall paused and smirked at him. "If you'd just cooperate, we wouldn't be needing to do this." She sighed and tsked at him. "Such a picky eater… it's only a squirrel."

He let himself go limp and stared up at her stubbornly.

She scowled down at him menacingly. "Eat it. Before I shove it down the gullet of your corpse..."

A scared look crossed his face for a second, but it fled as quick as it came. He shook his head again and stared her down until she seemed to take on a different route of persuasion.

She smiled and dropped the squirrel to the ground beside her. "Fine, you don't have to eat it."

He narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously, but she grinned. "What? It's obvious that you won't eat it by force, so I can't make you."

She leaned in close to his face and his breath caught in his throat. I stared at them. _That poor boy… should I warn him?_

Ani seemed to realize what Fall was doing, because she choked on a giggle. "It works on all guys I guess." She threw a glance in my direction. "I'm still sorry about that, by the way."

I waved it off. "I needed the medicine anyways."

Fall smiled down at him and he grinned back, just in time for her to fork the squirrel into his mouth.

He let out a sputtering sound as it finally registered that he had a squirrel head jammed in his mouth. She rolled off him, grinning valiantly as she did. "Works every time… right Ani?"

Ani nodded, watching as Mav jerked into a sitting position and spat the rodent out on the floor. He wiped his mouth and picked it up, throwing an evil look in Fall's direction as he pocketed it.

Fall came over to us. "Sorry guys, I didn't have time to catch anything else since he was being so picky." She threw a glance in Maverick's direction and he smiled at her innocently.

"What can I say? I don't like fur on my food." He came up behind her and hugged her. "Besides, I'm not mad at you..."

She laughed. "That's goo-"

He pulled the dead animal out of his pocket and stuffed it in her mouth, cutting her off. He bursted out laughing and continued his sentence. "Because I got my revenge."

She stood rock still for a moment, and even me and Ani started laughing at her expression. She had a blank look on her face, and only the tail was sticking out of her mouth. She pulled it out and stuck her tongue out. "Ew."

Mav nodded and chuckled. "Yeah. Now you know why I didn't want to eat it.

She held up the rodent and looked at me. "Are you still hungry?"

"No!" I looked at the mutilated animal. "No… not anymore."

She tossed it on the ground and put her hands on her hips. "Okay… squirrels aside, we're almost at the edge of the Flamewood."

Maverick grinned. "I found it before her, nearly scorched my pants off in the process… but I found it first!" He glanced around. "By the way… what are you doing in the middle of Darkwolf territory anyhow?"

Ani and Fall started explaining what was going on, and once they finished, Mav nodded. "Ah… so why exactly did you choose the most lethal route to the trod?"

Ani and I faced Fall and she smiled sheepishly. "You _had_ to say that… didn't you?"

"Yup."

She glanced at us. "I was drunk, okay?" She huffed. "And bored… but that's not my point."

I gaped at her. "_Bored_? You were bored so you decide to go tromping through darkwolf territory?" Slightly panicked sounding laughter escaped me. "That's just _fabulous_, Fall!"

She smirked. "It is, isn't it..?"


	30. Note- 5

**Okay, first off: I honestly don't know when this will be finished... lol I don't plan, I just like the story and characters and it's good practice for my future career [I will be an author, not might, will. lol] Mixiebunny**

**Second off: I'm confused, Mal and Mav are in other stories? I made them up... O_o guest**

**Third off: Lol thank you all for the comments! I've finally reached 30! lol I feel accomplished... **

**P.s. Don't be too sure... maybe Mav just lets her win 'cuz he's a gentleman. ;)**


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